


First Rule of Packrunning

by coplins



Series: Packrunners [41]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Child Death, Consent Issues, Demisexuality, Domestic Disputes, F/M, Friendship, Gray-Asexuality, Knotting, M/M, Multi, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Original Character Death(s), Other Fandoms Not Mentioned in Tags, Pack Politics, Public Sex, Spiders, Tags May Change, The Hale Pack - Freeform, Torture, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Smoking, Verse history, Violence, grossness, shifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:44:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 290,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coplins/pseuds/coplins
Summary: Marlon isn't generously sharing his past with people, but he grew up in a time when a lot of changes happened. When he finally opens up and talks he gives Dean and the others present answers to some questions they've asked and some they haven't. Like what really happened during the expropriation, what slowly killed Laurent Hale, why Packrunners are so feared, why Packrunners hold so much political power still despite being a minority, and how they became a minority in the first place.





	1. Jealousy

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. Here it is folks, the story nobody asked me to write. I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not? I've wanted to show rather than tell what happened during the expropriation for a long time but didn't know how to without writing a mostly original story with OCs as a focus since most SPN characters are locked into the present day. Technically, I could have used Bobby and John but they belonged to rural packs in the Midwest, far removed from the machinations that preluded the event. Hence, it befell on Marlon and Aiden.
> 
> This story starts in the present. It will then throw us back into the past for several chapters before going to the present again. If you're only interested in our pack and the shenanigans they do I still recommend you read this chapter and check in after updates to read the chapter summary to see if the chapter is present day or not. The rest is history seen from someone who lived it.
> 
> To all New Yorkers who happen to read this - yeeaah. Your city doesn't look quite the same in this world as it does in ours.
> 
> For those of you who are worried about some of the tags, the darkest tags will be written in the chapter notes as to not spring horror on you unawares.
> 
> Oh and before reading - essentially most characters we meet aside from Marlon are dead in the present day. Some we'll see die in this story since it's war. And be aware that your brain might be a bit confused when you meet the relatives Marlon named his two first kits after. ;D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon and Dean have a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Domestic dispute and violence in this chapter.

* * *

Luci stops just inside the door and sniffs the air then grimaces. “Oh fuck, I forgot about this part.”

Dick and Gabe flare their nostrils scenting as well. Dick almost sneezes from the sharp sting of anger heavy in the air, scrunching up his face in a grimace to stave it off. It would look funny if it wasn't for the cause. Marlon _and_ Dean’s anger. “What part?” Gabe asks.

“Father’s jealousy. Dad was a bit of a dick when it came to stirring up drama sometimes. You already know father and Amara used to fight but father and dad could be just as bad and it was always dad who started those fights by willfully provoking father. I didn’t get it back then, but looking back as an adult, dad was kind of an asshole sometimes.”

“You think this is a jealousy fight?” Dick asks.

“You don’t smell it?” Luci asks and looks at him, concerned. He knows the others save from Sam don’t pick up as many emotions as he does, but it’s hard to gauge how much they _do_ pick up. He'd tried to explain it to Raff. It's like seeing more colours than others. You know you see more colours but you don't know if others see in black and white, only see three or four colours, or if they see only one or two less than you.

“I only smell rage," Dick answers. Gabe nods his agreement. Gabe only looks slightly worried but he smells of anxiety as well as the much fainter traces of sadness, fear and budding panic. They need to get Gabe out of here before he has to witness the fight.

“It's jealousy. I can smell all the scents that go with insecurity and fear from father but not on Dean. But whatever caused it Dean thinks he's justified because I can't smell anything connected with malice or uncertainty from him.” It doesn’t _mean_ Dean’s justified, just that he thinks he is.

“If you can pick up those differences your nose is truly extraordinary, dear. Either way I think it might be a good idea to stop Sam from coming home before mommy and daddy have kissed and made up. He's been very concerned about things not working out,” Dick says.

Sam has an early shift today and will get off work in about 15 minutes. Luci jumps at the chance to get Gabe out of here. “Gabe, can you intercept Sam at work and take him somewhere? Do something fun for a couple of hours?”

“You got it, chief,” Gabe says and flees the scene in an orderly fashion. That’s to say, he runs back to the elevator as fast as he can and smashes the button repeatedly until the doors finally close. Fucking coward.

Luci snorts, looking at the elevator before closing the door. “Would you believe he’s the only one who’s challenged Father for the Patriarchship and won?”

Dick’s eyebrows rise in surprise. “Oh? I thought he had no interest in any kind of leadership?” 

Dick’s scent remains steady. He’s unfazed by the presumed argument going on somewhere in the apartment. It’s grounding. Luci can smell the jumble of his own scent too. Supposedly _nobody_ can pick out the underlying anxiety he feels. Not even him. Although, he can smell a range of mixed emotions―some of which he isn’t consciously aware of feeling―but Gabe and Mike had described it as impossible to smell any emotion at all. He briefly wonders if Sam smells all emotions at once like himself instead of the scent-equivalent of white noise. “He doesn’t. But once, a few years ago he was so pissed off at us for some decision we’d made. I don’t even remember what it was about. So he challenged Mikey first. Gabe was so furious and so determined that he won. And Mike is the best technical fighter amongst us brothers. I think I’m a better fighter in general, I’ve got the innate feeling for it. But me? I’m more like stepping on a landmine when Mike’s a precision tool. Anyway, Raff was above Mike at the time but bent over without a fight so Gabe went straight for father. It was rough as hell. Father and I have had our skirmishes at times only because I’m an idiot with a penchant of going ‘Oh yeah? Do your worst,’ and provoke when I get scared. But Gabe, that one time, was unstoppable.”

“Gabe won over Marlon in honest one to one?” Dick asks with an expression of disbelieving wonder.

“Nnn…” Luci makes a grimace. “I guess it boiled down to determination. Gabe was so furious he dragged it down to a life or death level and Father had a choice to make. Take Gabe out with the risk of permanently damaging him or even kill him, or give up. If Gabe was an actual enemy I don’t think he could have won.”

Dick makes a surprised and slightly amused noise. “So Gabe has been a Patriarch,” he states.

“Yes. For all of three and a half days before he panicked and crumbled under the pressure. He is and can be a great leader when he’s not thinking of himself as top dog. He’s been leading our marketing division with great success for a decade and we only nod along and agree with any decision he makes no matter how over the top it seems. His schemes work, and we know that. He just needs to think someone else made the actual decision to feel secure. But when he was Patriarch and Father came to him asking what he thought we should do about several pack related issues waiting passively for Gabe to make the call, Gabe went ‘Excuse me, I need to step outside for some air for a bit,’ and did _that_.” Luci points at the closed door indicating Gabe’s panicked exit. “Three weeks later we get a call from Shanghai and when he finally came home he fucking presented to me to retake his position at the bottom rung.”

“And you don’t remember what he was pissed about?”

Luci shakes his head. “No. But I remember that we didn’t go against that decision and that Gabe turned out to have been right. It’s not something we talk about. Anytime we’ve done so Gabe loudly changes the subject.”

Dick looks like he want to ask something more but a loud crash from inside the home silences them both. They can hear growling and arguing but not make out words.

“Maybe we should get out of here too?” Luci suggests, wanting to.

“Be chased out of my own home because of a little lovers’ spat? Hardly. But you’re welcome to come up to my rooms and keep me company if you’d like.”

Luci hesitates. Father and Dean are coming closer.

“Or we can stay here and eavesdrop?” Dick suggests with a little smirk, reading Luci like an open book.

Luci shrugs, not wanting to admit how much he wants to know the details of the fight, but not wanting to pretend he doesn’t either.

They can start to make out words.

“ _I don’t want you seeing him ever again!_ ”

“ _With all due respect,_ Sir _, fuck the ever-living shit out of you!_ ”

“Ah. As I suspected,” Dick says. “It’s about Sasha. Aleksandr Chaadayev? You all went to that conference in San Diego, Sam had a late shift and I visited Crowley, so Dean spent the weekend with him.”

Jealousy boils up in Luci’s chest, dark and toxic. That man has been nothing but trouble since he stepped into their lives. First, he tries to take Mikey from them, now Dean. The worst thing is that on top of smelling fantastic―odd, but fantastic―he also has this air of calm competence he shares with Father. At work when Luci had ‘accidentally run into him’ he’d been perfectly submissive but in the same way Father is - by choice. It’s just something about their way when they’re submissive that makes it understood that they ‘know’ that they’re really above you but choose to indulge you. It’s a very attractive trait that Luci strives to fake. He’s heard himself described that way many times but in his case, it’s 90% faking and 10% fraud. “I hate him.”

“Dean?”

Luci scowls. “No, you idiot. Chaadayev.” Maybe he should just put a knife in the guy’s back and be done with it? That would neatly solve all his problems with the guy.

“Ah. In that case, you might benefit from knowing that if Dean leaves the pack I’ll go with him. And if you do whatever foolishness I can see brewing behind that expression of yours, he will leave. His trust will be broken, mating bonds or not,” Dick deadpans with a mild smile. Once again reading him like an open book. It’s his own fault. The two of them had gone from decades of misreading each other to having lots of very intimate, quietly spoken conversations where Luci let himself be vulnerable. They had so much more in common than he’d ever imagined. Though, Dick didn’t share Luci’s insecurity that made him this jealous. 

Luci scrunches up his face in frustration and leans against the wall. “Why didn’t you tell us about it?”

“What? That Dean spends time with friends?” Dick dryly raises an eyebrow.

“Fr―” Luci snaps his jaws shut when the argument draws even closer. They've missed some words during their brief discussion.

“... behind my back to get yourself knotted by an Alpha outside of the pack. You bet that's a problem! You were the one to bring up trust in the first place!” Father is all but snarling the words.

"The fuck are you talking about? I ain't sneaking behind any backs. When we spoke on the phone yesterday you asked what I was doing and I fucking told you I was at a friend's house playing poker.”

"You should have told me with whom!”

"You didn't fucking ask! And we were playing fucking poker! He didn't fucking knot me so fuck you. And you wanna know something else?” Dean lowers his venomous voice, but they're in the corridor just around the corner so Luci can still hear what's said. “I _begged_ him to. I want his knot so fucking bad I fucking _begged_.”

Luci’s so outraged he almost thinks it’s he who roared for a beat but then there’s a crash when something slams into the decorative table with the vase in the corridor, tipping it all over sending it flying. Splinters come flying out into view showing exactly what force must have been used. The combatants are still not close enough to be seen but if they keep moving this direction they soon will be. There’s more roaring, from both Father and Dean this time. It’s not the icy, murderous type of roar, but a ‘Fight me!’-challenge of outrage. There’s the sound of scuffling, a hiss of pain followed by the scent of blood and growling.

“Blood,” Dick states quietly.

“Father’s,” Luci answers with a lowered voice, not wanting to disturb the combatants unless it gets out of hand. But by the sound it isn’t.

“You don’t _own me_. I wanna hang out with friends I fucking well will. I wanna take another knot, I fucking _will._ I never lied to you. Never! You wanna know something? Fucking ask me the next time. Sasha is my best fucking friend and a Siderunner to boot. I ain’t dropping him just because you have a jealousy fit,” Dean says harshly and comes stomping in their direction, stepping out in the entry hall.

“A Siderunner? And you never thought that might have been important information to mention before we merged?” Marlon snarls, hot on his heels. Marlon’s suit is torn in four gashes across the chest, colouring the surrounding fabric red. 

“No! Siderunners aren't part of the pack and don't have part in the decision-making! If they're unhappy with a merger they'll just stop siderunning. And don't fucking tell me you don't have Siderunners!”

"We don't! ...As such.”

Dean spins around to face Marlon. “ _Aha!_ " He exclaims triumphantly. “'As such’,” he says, making exaggerated air quotes, “means yes. You _do_ have Siderunners. I haven’t seen _you_ hand over a list of Siderunners or symbio-packs. So fuck you.” He turns around again and keeps stomping away, out of view. Marlon follows with the same stomping gait.

“Symbio-packs?” Dick asks with a curiously raised eyebrow at Luci.

Luci shakes his head, distracted by listening to the argument. “Midwest expression. We don’t call them that here. But it’s a word for packs living on your territory with your blessing, or packs you cooperate with, and so on. They differ from cells by not being connected to your pack directly, only sharing an amicable, mutually beneficial relationship. The Singers and Campbells would have been considered symbio-packs by the Winchesters,” he explains quietly.

“They’re not Siderunners, Dean. They can’t be. They’re Conservatives, most of them,” Marlon says out of view.

“Yeah? Who are they?” Dean demands. By the sound of it they’ve stopped again.

“The skeleton staff I hired to keep our mansion on Long Island in good repair and always ready for our visits. They’ve worked for us for a long, long time and they’re working for the best of our pack but don’t hold Packrunning values.”

“Values-schmalues. They live in your home, they’re a fucking cell, Conservatives or not. And you don’t see me making a ruckus about it! It’s not for you to decide who I can be friends with, okay? Get fucking over yourself!”

They’re on the move again, going up the corridor on the other side from whence they came. “Is it so hard to get that I don’t want some other Alpha come snipe my mate when I’ve finally found you?! There’s something off with that guy. He’s got an agenda and he’s aiming for you! I’m not going to tolerate―”

Dean roars and there’s another crash. They can hear thuds, thumps, and growls. When it stills it’s Dean speaking in a tight voice. “What’s off about him is that’s he’s another breed of human. He’s a Siberian. There’s nothing fucking wrong with him, he’s just different. And he ain’t trying to snipe me. He’s been pushing me, helping me, to get with you guys. Without him, there might not have been a pack merger.” There’s a pause of tense silence where Luci can see for his inner eye how his father clenches his jaws. Dean speaks up again, softer now, sad emotions twisting his tone. Luci can smell a tendril of fear in Dean’s scent now. “You remember the guy I told you about, Papa? The one you confessed could have been you? Don’t be that guy. Please. Just… don’t take advantage of my love for you to separate me from my friends.”

Silence. The scent of aggression is rapidly diminishing and Luci can pick out equal amounts of the different scents that go with insecurity from both of them. Beside him, Dick’s listening as hard as he is.

“You could, you know?” Dean says, voice small, tinted by sadness. “If we’d have this fight over and over but you treated Sam and Dick right… Sooner or later I’d drop Sash, Charlie, Benny, everybody. Have you seen Sam? He’s so fucking happy now. You’d have to fuck up big time for me to walk away and if you’d do what that guy did, you’d succeed.”

“Why is he telling him that?” Dick whispers with a bemused little head shake.

Dean’s not finished talking. “I love Sasha. I’m in love with you, your sons, but I love him too. He’s my best fucking friend, Marlon. Don’t make me lose him because I’ll fucking _mourn_.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Dean.”

“You’re not gonna. _Fuck_. You’re not gonna.”

There’s another prolonged silence. Then, a sudden bump and crash. Sounds that might have been fighting sounds, but… 

Luci relaxes. “Phew. Fight’s over.”

“What makes you say―?” The scent Luci had already caught gets strong enough for Dick to smell. “Oh. Well,” Dick says with an amused smirk when he too smells the mounting arousal.

“I don't get how you can be so calm when they fight like that,” Luci says.

“That was practically my every day the last years with Crowley.“

"Yes, but that _ended_ ,” Luci points out.

"Because we weren't in love and we wanted different things in life. Those two fight out of fear of losing each other, not out of frustration of having stalled. You said yourself that it was jealousy. Don't tell me your reason for being nervous now isn't fear of things not working out between them,” Dick says.

Luci scrunches up his face in a whiny grimace. Of course, that makes him nervous. If the Main and Patriarch don't get along… If one of his mates clashes with Father… What will happen then?

Right now both sounds and scents tell him things are rapidly heating up. Arousal is skyrocketing along with aggression. The combination of scents gives the spiky scent of aggression another meaning than it had a moment ago.

There's the sound of siphoning, bonds being confirmed and strengthened, low, lusty growls, short purrs. He can hear his father's voice in a low growl, pleading and demanding at once; “ _Tell me you're mine._ "

Dean's answer, urgent; “I'm yours! I'm yours! Just fucking _knot me already!_ I'm yo―” It's broken by a keening purr accompanied by a repeated slapping sound and the loud thumping of a piece of furniture banging rhythmically against the wall.

Dick chuckles. “They're equally eager, I hear. Come on. Let's go say hello now they're not tearing each other up anymore.” Dick wanders off in the direction of the former combatants. Luci has no choice but to follow.

They find the pair in what used to be the foyer to one of the old entrances. Dean's laid out on top of the sturdy, antique chest of drawers they use as a foyer table, legs wrapped around Marlon’s midriff. Marlon has his feet firmly on the floor, chest to chest with Dean, sucking secrete below Dean's neck gland, thrusting as if his life depended on it. Dean clings to him, hand fisted in Marlon's hair and shirt like he's trying to pull him in closer. His keening purr is only broken by him breathing “Yours. I'm yours," into Marlon's ear.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen," Dick says smoothly as he stops in line with their heads, hands loosely behind his back, looking down at them.

“Good afternoon, Richard,” Marlon stills and raises his head to say, while Dean smirks lopsidedly with a “Heya, Dick.”

“Tell me, you couldn't possibly have forgotten something?” Dick asks and raises an eyebrow, lips hooked in a small upward quirk.

“No.”  
“Nope.”

“Oh? Are you sure?”

Luci has no idea what has Dick looking slyly amused, and his Father and Dean so ‘innocent’.

“Positive,” Dean answers.

“Son, I don’t _forget_ ,” Marlon says.

“Aha. So what you mean to tell me is that you forewent it in an impulsive scheme to try to tie your partner more closely to you, in hopes that the possible consequence would lessen the risk of the relationship falling apart while it’s barely begun?” Dick asks innocently. Luci doesn’t get what he’s talking about until Dick puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a condom.

Marlon looks busted but it’s Dean who reaches out and snatches the condom from Dick, smelling of sudden annoyance, startling all three of them. “Alright, fine. You got me, okay?” he grouses and thrusts the condom at Marlon. “Here. Put it on before you knot me. I’m sorry, okay?” He glares accusingly at Marlon like it’s his fault Dean’s being called out.

Marlon lets out a small chuckle and takes the the condom. Luci almost purrs from the blast of happy contentment in his father’s scent.

“You know how they say great minds think alike?” Dick says as Marlon pulls out and opens the wrapper to put the condom on. The scent of polyurethane hits Luci’s nostrils and he figures out how Dick knew they weren’t using a condom in the first place. Luci might have an incredible sense of smell but he isn’t as good at remembering to note the absence of smells, even when it can be equally telling. “The same goes for fools in love,” Dick adds, reaching out to pet Dean over the hair. “While I wouldn’t mind an over-emotional, pregnant O in the household, nor five coddling Alphas with kitling fever, I would strongly suggest you try to refrain from pregnancy until after Sam’s bond has been confirmed by Marlon. I believe Sam needs to feel like this pack is stable and secure before we throw another upheaval at him, especially with college looming.”

“You’re a wise man, Richard,” Marlon says with an amused smirk.

“Tssk. Only telling you what you already know, dear,” Dick answers coyly. “Although, I _do_ have a question.”

“Hey, Dick, would you give us a moment so Papa can knot me befo―” Dean’s sentence is cut off by a gasp as Marlon presses in and starts thrusting with determination. 

Dick waits patiently while they finish what they were doing. Luci puts his arms around him from behind and rests his chin on Dick’s shoulder, watching his father and Dean go at it. Both of them have blood smears on them from the gashes on Marlon’s chest. Dean has a bruise blooming on his cheekbone. The scent of pain from the pair is minimal, muted by pleasure. It’s not the extent of damage on the body that regulates the scent of pain, rather it’s tightly connected to emotions and how a person experiences the pain. Emotions regulate how aware someone is of their pain and with it, how much you can smell it.

Luci’s glad he isn’t a Patriarch. Gabe might brag about being bottom rung. It’s not in Luci to do that, but he wouldn’t want to have the ultimate burden of responsibility in the pack even if he shared it with a Main. You have to think about so many things that you don’t when you’re mid-ranking. Some have it naturally like Dick had just shown, gently nudging others in the right direction. Luci is more the type that, for an instance, if Gabe said ‘That guy’s an asshole. Somebody should sneak into his office and put super glue on the seat of his private toilet,’ Luci would be nudging him encouragingly telling him what a brilliant idea it is. 

Once Marlon and Dean are firmly knotted, resting together with content purrs Dick speaks again. “May I inquire who threw the first punch?” he asks and reaches out to gently graze the bruise on Dean’s cheekbone with his fingertips.

They both answer at the same time.  
“Me.”  
“I did.”

Dean frowns and looks at Marlon. “You did _not_. I was the one who slapped you first,” he protests. “I was provoking the hell out of you and you just shoved me away from you to get some distance.”

“Son, I pushed you hard enough to wreck furniture and for you to slam your head into the wall. I’m quite certain you saw stars. It was the first act of violence.”

“Dude. I fucking slashed you. And all you ever did was defend yourself and tryna lock me down so I'd calm down. I was trying to get at you. And for the record, _damn_ , you're strong,” Dean argues. “And this is gonna look so hot when it heals.” He sticks his hand between their chests to touch the damage he did. 

Marlon purrs smugly despite the spike of pain in his scent when his wounds are touched. “Maybe I should mark _you_ up next time?”

Dean’s responding smile is a downright leer. “Maybe you should?”

Dick chuckles. “Well. Glad you enjoy roughing each other up. But I’m not sure the conflict that started it is resolved. From what we heard―”

“Not that we were eavesdropping,” Luci hastens to add.

“―while we were eavesdropping,” Dick goes on, ignoring Luci, “you were simply spooked by the heat of the argument and went on to affirm your physical bonds rather than coming to a conclusion. So would you humour me and walk me through what happened so we can resolve it here and now.”

Luci hugs Dick a bit closer. He appreciates that Dick takes the time to use his work skills at home.

“Sure. The argument started when I let slip that the friend I’d been with this weekend was Sasha. Papa decided to shove a broomstick up his ass about it and I slapped him. That’s when he went from prissy to insane,” Dean says.

“He told you he wouldn’t allow you to be friends with Chaadayev anymore and your response was to slap him?” Dick asks calmly and unjudging. He’s in his mediator mode.

“I did no such thing. I said I didn’t appreciate him hiding who he spends his time with from me and he got aggressively defensive. He told me to go screw myself and when I took a step closer he slapped me and walked away. At the time he smelled of stress and a few other things that in my mind equalled guilt, especially in relation to his unwillingness to talk about it. It’s what set off the level of anger that made me make demands of control over who he can associate with,” Marlon says while stroking Dean’s hair away from his face lovingly. “It wasn’t until I had Dean submitting in a lock-down and he reminded me of the man I am but don’t want to be, that I managed to rein my temper in.”

Both of them are calm and content but Dean’s scent takes on a hint of guilt. “I, uh,” he starts, looking at Marlon. “I have been kinda sorta holding back from telling you the level of friendship I have with Sash.”

Luci’s content to be a silent spectator where he stands holding onto Dick from behind. His own scent is still a jumble. That’s a good thing since it hides his own jealousy and stress. His father and Dean are currently pumped full of the soothing chemicals released during a knotting―the reason talks like this are always best to have when knotted―but should his own upset show in his scent it might rile up Dean and father all over again.

“Why did you do that, Dean?” Dick asks in a mild tone.

“I expected him to be angry. Look, Sash has all the makings of a Patriarch and he’s an older, experienced Alpha just like Papa. I figured Papa would feel threatened by him and I didn’t want to provoke a fight about him. So I clammed up about it. I didn’t _lie_. I just didn’t tell him.” Dean turns his head to look at Marlon instead of Dick. “I didn’t tell you about it and I’m sorry. I love him. Not like I love you, but I still love him. He’s been there for me, helping me, since first meeting more or less. He gave Mike and me his number and I’d just gotten a phone from Gabe and was eager to use it. I called him and we met up. We’ve been doing stuff like playing chess, fishing, hunting, scavenging, playing poker and talking. He’s taught me how to make use of my fur pattern while hunting and when I got sick he brought me home and cared for me. Plus, remember at the date when Sam claimed I didn’t need anyone to unload to because our pack was so small? He was wrong. So were you when you assumed dad was my primary ball plank. I should have told you and I'm sorry. But I don't want to give up that friendship.”

"Nor would I ask that of you,” Marlon says, smelling both annoyed and pleased at the same time. “My anger stemmed from what you were withholding rather than whom you were seeing. I may have very strong, negative feelings about the man in question but had you been chatting away about him the way you do about Bradbury, I would have been stewing in my negativity without saying a word about it. I know the importance of having good friends.”

" _How?_ You don't have any― _ouff!_ " Luci's joke is cut short by Dick twisting in his grip to jab an elbow in his belly.

Dean frowns at him but Marlon just chuckles. “Just because I don't go around making new friends doesn't mean I don't have any, son. Those still alive live out of state. But the great majority of those I considered close friends are dead and gone.”

"The war?” Dean asks.

Marlon makes a non-committal little shrug. “Some. Others, I'm sad to confess, died because of a few ill-fated decisions taken by our pack when I was young.”

"We killed your friends?” Luci asks, abashed.

"Indirectly. Your great grandfather was a brilliant man. Few people understand economy as well as he did. We were already rich and powerful before he took over the business but he tripled our assets in just a few years. And this was during the war when many businesses were struggling. But he forgot the number one rule of Packrunning.” Marlon lifts an imploring eyebrow at Luci, prompting him to say it.

“We are one,” Luci responds automatically. His Father, uncle Aiden, dad, even aunt Amara had drilled them to understand that from day one.

Marlon’s scent turns even more pleased than it already was. “Mh. Exactly. My grandpa didn’t see how that statement was important beyond our own pack until it was too late.”

“Is that why you’re so jealous and possessive?” Dean asks. “Because you’ve lost so many friends?”

Marlon shakes his head but it’s Luci that answers. “No. Dad used to flirt with others and threaten to leave to keep Father on his toes. I remember the fights.”

Marlon presses his lips together to a thin line, discontent muddling in his scent. “I don’t like to speak ill of my Charles, not hear others do so. We were very happy together. That said, he did crave blind worship. Something I was happy to provide. However, sometimes I was busy with work and then he’d throw dramatic fits to get my attention back. Though he’d play on the possessiveness and jealousy I already harboured in my heart. He wasn’t the cause of it.”

“Then what was?” Dick asks and reaches out to pet Marlon over the hair. Both Marlon and Dean purrs as Marlon’s scent turns content again. 

“Who’s to say? I’ve been possessive of what’s mine for as long as I can remember. But grandpa did something to try to wean me off of it and it had the opposite effect. In a way, what he did might be the reason why Packrunners are still around today. The events around that time are definitely the reason why we hold so much power in government today despite so few of us still being around. Have none of you ever wondered why there are so many Packrunners in positions of power despite us being a minority?”

“No.”  
“Haven’t thought about it.”  
“Never.”

Marlon visibly withholds an eye-roll.

“Would you tell us about it? You never talk about your youth,” Luci says. “It was always Aiden telling us about it. And he said you were a swing kit which I just _know_ has to be a lie.”

Marlon’s smirk is downright smug. “No, son, that’s completely true. You think you’re the only one who knows how to be a rebel?”

“Oh, my. A swing kit? You’ve certainly piqued my interest now,” Dick says. “May I suggest we move to a bedroom where we all can rest comfortably and care for your blemishes while you tell us about your youthful rebel days?”

Said and done. They all move to the nearest bedroom that just happens to be Luci’s. The change of location isn’t completely smooth since Marlon comes a second time while carrying Dean and almost keels over. Luckily, Luci’s there to catch and stabilise the pair while Dean laughs heartily.

A short moment later Marlon’s on his back in the bed, Dean straddling him while cleaning the wounds on his chest with the first aid kit Dick fetched. Luci’s sitting, holding a kitchen towel filled with ice to Dean’s cheek, and Dick’s lying on his side beside Marlon, supporting his head with a hand. The whole room smells of their shared contentment. Luci’s filled with more than a little anticipation to finally hear his father talk about his time growing up.

“Where to start…?” Marlon ponders. “Oh, I know. You know how sometimes you meet people who end up having a great impact on your lives? The sort of meeting that, had it not occurred, might have changed how you live your life today completely? Let me start by telling you about the single most pivotal meeting in my life.”

“Dad?” Luci asks.

Marlon smiles. “No, son. Meeting my Charles certainly had a big impact on my life but I’m not talking about him. No, this happened when I was still a kit…”

* * *


	2. The Omega Mercenary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon's a kit during the war-torn beginning of a century. He isn't happy about it. His pack has decided he can't leave their property even to go to school due to the dangers of crossing the bridge and the irregular bombings of the city. The greater part of the pack is off fighting the war as volunteers to defend the country against the Union. That leaves Marlon with mostly people he feels doesn't understand him and it's making him miserable. But then a few pack members come back home bringing something that excites him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright folks, take what you know of history and historical timelines and throw it out the window. This world is close enough to our own to share some history and borders but also far from our own. Things that happened for us at a certain time didn't in their world, or happened earlier, or later. Marlon's story contains some slang from the 20s - 40s (as well as verse-specific slang later on), some of the events shared between our worlds took place between the late 19th century and 1940s for us. I did a lot of research then took the information and threw it out the window with a 'close enough'. That will be relevant mostly in later chapters but I want you to know it.
> 
> As for slang, I'm hoping that anything not explained will be understandable through context. Like I'd never heard 'take a powder' before that means 'get lost' but would guess it by context. Don't hold back from asking what something means if you come across a word or phrase you don't understand if it isn't explained in the text, though. :)

* * *

Adults say you’ve got to look at the bigger picture. Things don’t function by themselves, don’t exist in a vacuum. To truly understand things you’ve got to take a step back.

‘ _...200 years ago the Napa County was predominantly populated by Packrunners. Most were small packs devoted to farming. The region had two bigger packs that were considered the nodes of power at the time. The Ellis pack and the Montgomery pack. The Ellis pack made a trade deal with Rochester-Dole, the biggest company in California, and diverted the river running over their territory towards the land owned by Rochester-Dole. The deal made them the richest pack in the country…_ ’

Marlon stares at the text in the book with a frown. This is the first book to mention Rochester-Dole, a Conservative company, being involved. In the three other history books he’d read, it had said Ellis and Montgomery had made a pact or a deal that made them the richest families, but never with whom. He knew they’d changed the course of the river and that it had impacted the farmers in a bad way, but the next time the Napa County was mentioned in history books, a mere 40 years later, it was predominantly populated by Conservatives, and both Montgomery and Ellis had ‘disbanded’. 

Disbanded is what Conservative writers call it. They don’t get how packs work. Packs don’t ‘disband’, they die. Marlon taps the text on the page with a finger and wishes he had a book written by a Packrunner instead. He closes the book and hides it in a metal box that he puts under the bench next to the apple tree so his little sister can't find it and draw all over it. He stands up and picks an apple from a low hanging branch. He knows from old paintings that this used to be an orchard. These days only a few fruit trees and bushes remain. Instead, they grow beautiful flowers and foliage, the lawns kept neat and decorative. There are still enough trees bearing fruit for the fallen fruit to be a nuisance. Marlon has heard that there are Packrunners starving in the city. He thinks it's a waste that they don't collect the fruit they don't need and distribute it amongst the city packs. Packrunners are one. That's what the adults say. But they say it about _their_ pack. Marlon doesn't get it. How can they in one breath say that you have to look at the bigger picture and in the next narrow it down to only one piece of the puzzle? Marlon can feel the meaning of 'Packrunners are one’ in his bones. He had two other Packrunners in his class and they'd gravitated towards each other like moths to a flame. They belong to different packs but they're one. That's why he can't make sense of some of the decisions the grown-ups have made lately.

Marlon misses school. They've been homeschooled for the last 6 months since it was deemed too dangerous to leave their territory for any Juvenile. Uncle Antony isn't a real teacher and it shows. He can't always answer Marlon's follow up questions and his lessons aren't as well planned as they were in school. Marlon gets to take lessons with the Juvies because he's too far ahead to take lessons with the other kits. ' _Uncle Antony, in chapter 18 the writer contradicts what he said in chapter 3. How does that make sense?’ ‘Um… We haven’t even started chapter 1 yet, so… You know what, Marlon? How about if you just come back here in three hours and take your lesson with the older kits, okay?_ ’ He never did get to know the answer to that question. He’s missed things because of his jump but it’s better than having to study with those who need what’s there in plain text explained. Still, sometimes it’s noticeable. Like during biology lessons. He's missed a lot of how the body works and has to piece things together himself.

His favorite subject is history. Adults always say you have to look at the big picture. When it comes to history, Marlon does. It's when you look at the big picture that history becomes truly fascinating. Things line up and make sense. There are patterns, people making the same mistakes over and over, having the same successes. 

Marlon doesn’t actually like school all that much. But he likes to be right. And to be right you need to know stuff. 

The way his pack has turned on other packs is one of these things that keeps bugging him. Ever since he overheard a meeting when they discussed the pollution from the weapons factory and the damage it causes for people near the harbour it’s been eating at him. He gets that it’s good for them that they’ve got a steady supply of cheap guns and that they stay rich. But reading history books and the family chronicles there are patterns to pack power. Packs that turned on other packs in their area lost their power. 

They’ve told him that learning history is important to prevent from repeating past mistakes. That you need to look at the big picture. But they don’t. If they did, they’d see clear as a bell that they’re repeating a pattern that had been the fall of several great packs. When he points this out they ruffle his hair and tell him he's too young to understand. That he should use his head to think about kit stuff. He would, if they'd just listen to him about this.

Marlon stares at the sky and puts his apple in his pocket when the sirens start blaring. It's mostly overcast but he thinks maybe the planes may fly low enough to see.

“Marlon! Come on! We need to get down to the bomb shelter!” His aunt yells when he doesn't run towards the mansion like the rest of the pack. Underneath it, there's a warren of rooms in the old cellar. They even have a dungeon. A few years ago when the rumours started that the enemy was considering to bomb the city, part of the cellar had been turned into a bomb shelter, reinforced to hopefully withstand a direct hit. The cellar had existed since the mansion was built but Marlon had discovered a second level during his bored exploration of the cellar that so often had been their prison these last couple of months since the bomb raids started. Those tunnels went deeper, down into natural caves. There even were two ways out far from their land. He's never left the caves though. He's not allowed to leave their territory without an adult accompanying him. But even secret tunnels couldn't hold his attention for long. He hates being cooped up underground. Hates everyone being on top of each other, monitoring him, reprimanding him.

“I just want to see the planes!" He yells back and peers back up at the sky.

"Stop that nonsense and come here right now, Mar!"

“But, Jane, I― _ouff_." His older brother Aiden comes running and scoops him up with an arm around his midriff so he almost loses his breath when the arm hits. Aiden hoists him over a shoulder and keeps running.

Aiden doesn't let him down until they've reached the stairs to the cellar. “Get down there, you little imp," he says slightly out of breath.

This time Marlon scurries downstairs without further protest. He pushes past a couple of others to trot in the direction of the dungeon where he likes to play. Plus in there he can hear the distant sound from the bombs hitting through the long vent shaft. He doesn’t like to be cooped up with the others during bomb raids. The air in the reinforced rooms always stinks so sour from fear. His older sister grabs him by the arm when he passes her, stopping him in his track.

“You can’t go in there now. We have prisoners,” she warns before letting go.

“We do?”

“Yes. Uncle Timothy brought them in late last night. They’re enemy soldiers. The door is locked. Be careful. I’ll tell the others where you are during the headcount.”

“Thanks, Nina,” he says giving her a brief smile before he takes off running in the weak, artificial light of the corridors. His insides are abuzz with excitement and a small thrill of fear. His older siblings are a pain in the butt but they’re also the best. The same can’t be said for his cousins and younger siblings, always harping on him to do as he’s told, teasing him, stealing from him.

Marlon turns into a side corridor and slows down when he hears voices. The air stinks from fear, anxiety, anger, blood, pain, and… amusement?

“ _Would you stop that? It’s stressing me out._ ”

“ _Why? It entertains me,_ ” a second, amused voice says with a chuckle.

“ _Would you two cut it out? Diego, just ignore him. You know he’ll keep doing it if you harp on him,_ ” a third voice says in annoyance.

Marlon sneaks closer, hearing a jingling of chains and a repetitive scraping noise. * _clink, clink, psssht. clink, clink, psssht._ *

He can’t figure out what it is so he sneaks up to the door and carefully opens the upper hatch in the door to peer into the dungeon. The three soldiers are hung up evenly spaced in the room. Their feet are chained together with short chains that would only allow for shuffling forward, that chain is pulled through metal circles on the floor. Marlon always wondered what those circles were for. The handcuffs have a long chain that is pulled around the foot-chain and a third chain hanging from the ceiling attached to the handcuffs, forcing their hands in a position over their heads. Marlon knows the long chain for the handcuffs is to more easily dictate how much a prisoner can move their hands and arms. You just use a padlock to shorten the chain and can use the rest of the length as a leash. Right now they’re strung up and the third man is making that weird sound. He shuffles awkwardly making the chains clink, then leans backwards and spins, letting the chains hold him up. The soles of his boots scraping the floor in circles are what’s making the scraping noise. He repeats the process until the chains are all twisted up then changes direction. It looks like he’s playing. He’s even mouthing ‘weee’ now and then.

“Fucking _puta_ , stop that or I’ll beat you bloody when we get loose!” The man hanging closest to the spinning man snaps. He’s as stressed as the spinning man is relaxed.

The spinning man stops to smirk at his compatriot. “Sure. What do you suggest we do that is more fun?” he teases.

“We’re fucking prisoners. There’s nothing fun about it, you mongrel,” Diego spits.

“Oh, I don’t know. We’re not naked, they left the light on and there’s no water dripping on us. They’re treating us much better than you treat prisoners,” the playful prisoner quips. He’s blond, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered and tall. He has a hint of an accent Marlon can’t place. ‘Diego’ is probably a Spaniard, but it’s impossible to tell where the third man is from by his mousy hair and brown eyes. “If we’re lucky they might even feed us,” the blond, playful man adds. He looks at the door. “Hey, kit, you wouldn’t by any chance feel like letting me out, do you?”

Marlon sucks in a startled breath at being spoken to. “No, you’re right. I wouldn’t by any chance feel like it,” he answers, trying to fake arrogance. His heart races in part fear and part excitement.

“Shame,” the blond man says easily. He’s not acting like a prisoner is supposed to. Marlon sticks his nose as far as it will go through the bars in the small opening to scent as much as possible now that they’ve acknowledged his presence. The smell of fear and anger is overwhelming. There’s pain, and sweat, and blood too, as well as two different Alpha scents and one… Omega. But there are only men inside. Marlon can’t discern whose scent is whom’s. He looks at the men trying to see some hint at who might be an O but none fit the idea he has in his head of what a male O might look like. He knows they exist he’s just never met one, but they have three female Alphas in the pack. He’d thought a male Omega would look feminine and small, more like a woman. All the three female Alphas they have in the pack are big and strong. He wouldn’t say that they look particularly masculine but they’re all bigger than the rest of the women in the pack. (It might have to do with them being related to his branch of the family since his parents and their siblings are all tall and strong people. But still.) He’s just imagined male Os to be small and slim. All the prisoners are muscular, broad-shouldered, and masculine. The Diego fellow is the shortest, but he’s hairy and stocky. Os aren’t supposed to be hairy, are they? It agitates Marlon that he’s faced with his first male O ever and can’t figure out who it is. “How ‘bout some food, kit? That apple you have smells mightily good,” the blond man cajoles.

Blond man has quite a nose on him to scent that amidst all the other scents.

“Sure. I’ll give you the apple as soon as you tell us all the battle plans,” Marlon sasses.

“At 1800 today there will be three waves of bombings all concentrated to the southeast, with the goal to take out the railroad connection. Tomorrow at 0300 another bombing is planned. This time the target will be the shipyard where USS Victoria is not so cleverly hidden. Thursday a―”

Diego trashes in his chains and spits at Blond man, cussing him out in Spanish. Marlon doesn’t know Spanish but he knows curses in whatever language they’re delivered.

“Kit, move me from this company and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I can’t guarantee plans haven’t been changed, but I won’t hold back,” Blond man declares. 

“Take a powder. You think I’m falling for that? You don’t fool me. You fight for the same thing as they do,” Marlon scorns. Blond man might be wearing camo instead of the greyish browns that the other two are wearing but he’s still the enemy.

Blond man gasps theatrically and looks at his companions. “You fight for money too?! I thought you were regulars!” He exclaims in mock surprise then sniggers when this riles up both Diego and the third man.

“We’re nothing like you, you lowlife, traitorous dog! We fight for honour and equality for all. You fight for money. You sold us out. Fucking hireling. You can’t be trusted to keep your word. It’s your fault we’re here!” Diego rails.

Blond man huffs in embarrassed amusement and sways back and forth in his chains. “Well. Yes. Obviously. Though it was a slight miscalculation that led me to be here with you. _That_ wasn’t supposed to happen. However, I stand to argue two of your points,” he says and stands up as straight as the chains allow him. “One, you fight for the oppression of all, not equality. Second, you can trust us to keep our word. As long as whoever hires us, keeps up their end of the bargain you’ll never find soldiers as dedicated and loyal as we.”

“Arvid, you just admitted to setting us up,” the third man who’s been mostly quiet states.

Arvid. Marlon turns the strange name over in his head. He can’t decide if it fits the blond man or not. But it is his name. He’s got a name for him now.

“I did, yes. But, the funny thing about mercenaries, you need to pay them for them to keep fighting, see?” Arvid says with a friendly expression. Then his expression changes and become darker. “Your lot broke the contract. No payment for two months. No supplies as promised. Oh, but you did send us new orders and you managed to deliver supplies to your regular troops camping with us. So we simply decided to take back those two months of free work since the contract was already broken. If we’re going to do charity work it will be for things we ourselves choose.”

“So now we all die,” Nameless guy accuses. “You too.”

“Perhaps.” Arvid leans back and starts swinging back and forth again, looking for all the world like he’s truly chained up by choice. “I wonder how they’ll do it?” he muses. “Maybe they’ll just let us hang here until we either starve or freeze to death.” He turns his attention towards Marlon again. “Kit? It’s kind of drafty here. That shaft, does it go directly outside?”

“It’s too narrow to crawl through if that’s what you’re thinking,” Marlon answers.

“It wasn’t. But it will go down to sub-zero tonight. Any chance you’ll light a fire or put some kind of heating on for us?”

Marlon laughs meanly. It’s not funny and he doesn’t want Arvid to freeze, but they are prisoners and he thinks he has to act callously. That’s what you do towards enemies. Besides, they’re Progs. Barely falling into the category ‘human’ anyway since they don’t have any empathy.

“No? Lucky for us they’re just bombing, not using toxic gas. A cellar vented like this wouldn’t protect you then,” Arvid goes on. “You'd need filters, not open shafts. In France where―”

“Will you keep your mouth shut, you inbred mutt!” Diego snarls.

“I wonder what they’ll do to us?” Arvid muses again, unperturbed. “We’ll be hanging here until we soil ourselves, that’s a given. That won’t be too pleasant. But will they come to interrogate us? Some waterboarding perhaps? Electric shocks? Or more old-fashioned ways perhaps? Putting spikes underneath our fingernails, stripping pieces of skin off, whipping―”

“ ** _SHUT UP!_** ” Diego screams and trashes as if he's futilely trying to kick Arvid. The scent of fear from inside the dungeon has gone up to almost unbearable levels.

Suddenly Arvid throws himself towards Diego roaring, dropping long fangs as quickly as Aiden or father, flaring brightly. The other two soldiers cry out in fear and throw themselves as far away as they can from Arvid.

_He's a Primal._

Marlon stares wide-eyed as Arvid growls a cold threat to his companions, casting them in yellow and red light from his strong flare. His eyes… lemon yellow with a thick, red rim. They're striking. Without thought Marlon flares in response.

Arvid throws a look at the new light source and does a double take. Threats forgotten, he stares unabashedly. “Holy―! Get a load of the peepers on that kitty,” he says in awe. "Diego! Check it out! They're purple like lilacs blooming in spring.”

Further back in the corridor Marlon's standing he hears an uncle yell “ _Lights out!_ " The next second everything but Arvid and Marlon's flare goes black. They always cut the lights during the bombings, trying to make their home look less of a target. Some of the safe rooms will have lights switched on since there are no windows or vents where light can escape. But here there are shafts leading up to the ground and there is a tiny risk it could be seen from above in darkness.

“It's going down like I told you, Peepers," Arvid says softly when the ground rumbles as the first bomb hits somewhere far away. Even from this distance, you feel it in the ground. “Look at your watch if you have one. It's 1800. 6 PM. Three waves of bombings to the southeast." 

Marlon would look at his clock except that would mean he'd have to look away from those glowing orbs with their striking red rim. So instead they stare at each other even if Arvid can't see more than a pair of lilac eyes through the bars in the narrow slit in the door. At some point when the ground shivers and the sound of not quite as distant destruction filters down muted through the vent shaft, nameless guy begins to sob and breaks the spell.

Arvid chuckles and looks away from Marlon and Marlon feels a strange type of jealousy. Jealousy, because of a prisoner of war not giving him his full attention. Annoyed, he drops down from his tiptoe position. He should leave but doesn't want to so he sits down with his back to the door to sulk.

Arvid is speaking, but not to him. “So you're crying now, Allan? Not so fun to be on this side of the bombs, is it? Man up. You know they aren't going to bomb this position. Not even the kit is crying.”

Marlon adds 'Allan’ to the list of names and listens carefully.

“We don't know that. We don't even know where we are!”

“Sure we do. We're in Northampton. If you weren't so darn afraid to be taken for one of my kind, you'd know that too.” Arvid's voice rises. "Hey, Peepers, you know that, right? That Progs can smell as well as we do? They can flare too but they do neither. They stumble around in darkness and while we spend our time growing up learning to interpret the scents around us they learn to ignore the input their noses give them. And you know why? Because they see how they treat Primals and don't want to be treated that way themselves. These jokers could have scented where we went. We knew our starting position, we've studied the maps. It wasn't that hard to ignore the dirty smell of the canvas bags over our heads and scent what we passed. But they don't. Instead, they hire Primal mercs to do the things they refuse to do themselves, while they fight to eradicate and subdue our kind. Isn't that ironic? That the only way they can truly get to us is by using us to do it for them? Equality. Hah! Yet many actually believe it. And they're going to take the treatment you guys give us as proof we're cruel, dumb animals. But they'll ignore the work camps they throw us in to be starved, tortured and enslaved. Pfft.”

Marlon stands up again and goes up on his tiptoes to look inside. Arvid had stopped flaring but politely lets his eyes glow again the moment Marlon's lilac shine falls through the bars. “Yet you fought for them,” Marlon accuses.

"I don't fight for them, I fight for the Demon."

“The demon?"

“Yes. And he'll come for me. Sooner or later. Nobody gets left behind.”

"You might be dead already by then,” Marlon points out.

“True. And if I am he'll decimate your pack appropriately. If not? He'll only harm those of you who try to stop him from rescuing me. But don't be afraid, pretty Peepers, unless in self-defence he'd never hurt a kit. You'll be safe.”

"I'm not afraid of demons,” Marlon declares.

Arvid sniggers. “Come back and tell me that again when they’ve moved into your head.”

The light comes back on.

Arvid's face goes serious. “Peepers, do me a favour and get me moved before tomorrow," Arvid says. "I don't care if you hang me up in a deeper, danker hole, just get me away from these two before my Heat hits. I know you're too young to understand but I'd be grateful if you spare me the humiliation of wanting their knots while in this vulnerable position. Or just have me killed and be done with it. I’ll talk. Tell you anything you want to know if I know the answer. Just get me away from these two.”

Marlon draws breath to answer but is interrupted by someone coming. 

“ _Mar!_ Marlon!” It’s Aiden. Of course, it is. Like a herding dog doing his job keeping track of the one errant lamb always going missing. “There you are. Why do you always have to wander off?”

“I didn’t wander off. Nina said she’d tell you where I went,” Marlon protests with a scowl. “Besides, I didn’t _do_ anything. I’m just talking to Arvid.”

“Arv―!” Aiden exclaims in exasperation and annoyance and shoves Marlon out of the way to growl low and threatening through the slit, flaring in full. “Whatever crap you've been feeding my brother, it won't work,” he says and slides the slit shut with a slam. He grabs Marlon's arm and starts pulling him away. “Come on. Let's get out of here."

“We need to move Arvid before his Heat hits tomorrow,” Marlon informs him as he’s being dragged away.

"We're not moving anyone. And I don’t care who of them Arvid is, you can’t trust a word they’re saying. They’re Progs.”

“Arvid isn’t a Prog, he’s a Primal!”

“Then why the heck would he be fighting for them?!” Aiden exclaims in frustration, always too impatient to listen. Everyone is always too impatient to listen. You don’t have a voice until you’ve presented. Marlon hates it. But no. He’s not fair. Aiden does listen. Just not right now. “He’s probably just pretending to be Primal to win you over.”

“He’s a Merc.”

“Then that’s worse. He’s betraying his own for money,” Aiden states.

“But so are we!”

“That’s floy floy. We’re fighting for our people and freedom.”

“No, we’re not. The weapons factory on our land up-river lets out stuff in the water and it’s making people down by the harbour get sick and die. Our people. But we don’t care because it’s convenient for us to have the factory there and to care for the waste in other ways would raise the prices. And it isn’t even our own factory. It’s owned by the Randalls, and guess what? The Randalls are Conservatives. We’re allowing Packrunners and Primals to _die_ while Conservatives and Progs get richer and more self-entitled just because we betray our own.”

Aiden stops and lets go of him just to turn and scowl at him. “Wow. _Somebody’s_ been eavesdropping on things they shouldn’t. I don’t know what you’ve heard but whatever we do, it’s for the good of the pack.”

“If it isn’t for the good of all Packrunners it isn’t good for us either. You need to think long-term, Aiden. Some of the packs down by the harbour we supposedly have treaties with. And when our newly presented Os wander, we don’t know where they’ll end up. And what do they always tell us? If we get lost or separated from our pack - find another pack. _Any_ pack. Why? Because together we’re stronger. Putting profit and convenience before unity will be the death of us. I’m telling you, Aiden, if we keep this up the Conservatives will find a way to bereave us of our power and wealth too and we’ll have no one to back us because we’re the most effective at stomping out the power of other packs and we’ll have done so before the Conservatives come for us,” Marlon babbles barely taking a breath between sentences.

Aiden looks down at him, eyes full of concern and jaws clenching and unclenching. He shakes his head. “You think too much or not at all, Mar. You’re the least pack oriented person I know yet you always go on about things like this. Can’t you just leave thinking about these things to the grown-ups like you’re supposed to?”

“I would, if they weren’t such fat-heads about it,” Marlon sasses.

Aiden rolls his eyes but Marlon can see the doubt seeded. Aiden’s a goody-two-shoes but at least he listens which is more than most of the family does. Aiden will still tell him to take a powder or try to corral him into obedience but at least he hears him out. Marlon can see how he mulls things over for days after he’s gotten that concerned look on his face. Sometimes he even echoes what Marlon’s said to the grown-ups. When Aiden says something, even adults put _some_ stock in what he says because he’s got those stupid red eyes just like aunt Lucifer and Patriarch Jedikiah do. As if red eyes would _mean_ something. Nobody cares about Marlon’s rare eye colour when Aiden’s around.

Except Arvid did.

“Aiden, come on. Please help me get Arvid moved before his Heat,” Marlon pleads. He isn’t quite sure what the big deal is except adults get sick when they’re in a Heat or Rut and knotting helps cure them or something.

“No. That’s final.”

Marlon stares at his unbudging brother for a moment then turns around and sprints back towards the dungeon.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Aiden calls after him and takes up pursuit.

Marlon stops and turns to argue. “He’s an O about to go into Heat. We’re supposed to take care of them, aren’t we? I’m giving him my apple.”

“He’s the enemy, Mar.”

“Okay, but, Os always get sick when they’re in Heat, don’t they? We might want to interrogate him but it’s going to be sub-zero tonight and they’ll all be weakened and he might die too soon, unable to withstand the starvation and freezing at the same time. And didn’t mom say something about metabolism working overtime during Heats so they need to eat or they’ll suffer more than normal if they don’t? So if I give him my apple he’ll keep himself alive to be interrogated better.” Nobody can claim he isn’t good at coming up with plausible bullshit when he wants to.

Aiden hesitates.

_Now for the final blow_ , Marlon thinks and tries his best impression of puppy eyes. He’s useless at it but they do occasionally work on Aiden. “Please. When I present as an Omega it’s how I’d want to be treated.” 

_Bulls-eye._

Aiden’s resolve crumbles. “Alright. But you can’t go inside. It’s locked.”

“I know that,” Marlon dismisses and turns to jog towards the dungeon again. Aiden jogs after him and when Marlon gets to his knees to open the somewhat bigger slot for food trays at the bottom of the dungeon door Aiden stands above to look through the peephole slot. They open at the same time, making the clack of the sliding hatches seem like one.

“Psst. Arvid,” Marlon says.

Arvid looks up first at the peephole at Aiden’s red flare then down to Marlon’s lilac. He wastes no time gawking at Aiden’s red eyes. It’s immensely satisfying. “Yes, Kitty?”

“If I roll my apple to your feet, you think you can pick it up somehow?”

Arvid grins. “Watch and awe, Peepers. Watch and awe.”

Marlon takes his apple out of his pocket, aims carefully, then rolls it through the slot at Arvid’s feet. He holds his breath when Arvid somehow sweeps the apple up with his feet and with a jerk sends the apple high up above his head leaning back his upper body.

Aiden sees something Marlon misses at first since Marlon’s focused on the arc of the apple rather than Arvid, breathing a silent ‘Athena!’ above Marlon a beat before Marlon sees it. When the apple falls down as straight as it flew up Arvid catches it with elongated jaws, fangs dropped and teeth pointy. Marlon lets out a “Wow!” He’s never seen anyone do such a huge skull shift that fast. Arvid tips his head back and in three cronches―much like when you feed a dog by throwing them big treats―he gobbles the apple down and shifts back. They can smell his pain but there’s no outward sign that shifting that fast was painful for him. His gaze flits to the bottom of the door to meet Marlon’s. 

“Thank you, Marlon. I will remember this,” Arvid says calmly.

“What about us? I want an apple too,” Diego protests and wiggles in his chains.

“And I want there to never have been a war, and yet here we are,” Arvid quips, flipping to his jokerish persona again with a smirk.

“If there was no war you wouldn’t have a job, merc,” Aiden retorts harshly.

Arvid swings himself around in that playful manner he had when Marlon first saw him, then stops to lightly say, “If there was no war I would have a family,” with an easy smile. But he’s still not looking at Aiden’s red eyes, he’s looking at Marlon.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Aiden says and closes the hatch. He gives Marlon a light kick. “Come on. You did what you came to do. Let’s scram.”

Marlon closes the food hatch and gets up then walks silently beside his brother. He’s shook.

Apparently, so is Aiden. “Jeepers, Mar! Did you see that?” he says when they turn the corner into another corridor out of imminent range to be overheard. “I’ve never seen anyone do a head-shift so quickly. I thought Aunt Lucifer and dad were the fastest shifters ever, but that… I have no words. I think he shifted his neck and throat too but it was all so fast I’m not sure,” he babbles with wide eyes.

Marlon feels a bit proud as if it’s his doing that Arvid can shift like that, somehow. He’s the one who discovered that Arvid’s a Primal, after all. “I saw. There’s no way he’s faking being a Primal.”

“You’re hecking right about that,” Aiden agrees.

“Will you help me convince the grown-ups to move him?”

Aiden makes a face of regret. “I can try, but it’s above my pay grade and you know that.”

Marlon knows. He longs for the day he presents. He hopes he’ll be an Omega like Arvid.

* * *


	3. To Do As You're Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kit Marlon isn't too happy with his so-called little sister. It's causing him trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here. Have a short chapter. :) 
> 
> Also, I was asked about updates of my other stories. So. I've simply forgotten to update Lucifer's Child. I'll do that this week. Sadly, I'm not one of those awesome writers who can rotate what I write very successfully. I dive headfirst into a verse and submerge myself in it which fills me with inspiration for writing. So for those of you waiting for the end of Six Degrees and the continuation of Volatile Chemistry, I'm afraid you'll have to keep waiting. In VC I hit a wall when writing the confrontation between Dean and Adam when Dean comes out to him. I had the scene perfectly in mind but was too tired to write it and when I woke up I couldn't remember exactly how it played out. Since it's a very loaded, emotional scene it needs proper attention so it's been put on hold. I _am_ sorry about that. Truly, I am. VC will always be my baby and I've got stuff already written in the verse that I can't post until I've bridged the time-gap. :P
> 
> So. Now you know.

* * *

He can’t sleep. Cold seeps in through a tiny crack in a window and ice crystals have formed on the outside of the glass. He could take his pillow and go to Aiden’s room to seek warmth but he doesn’t want to. This is _his_ room with _his_ stuff. Earlier that evening he’d been reprimanded for scratching his little sister. She’d deserved it. He’d come to his room to find her inside of it playing with one of his stuffed toys - his favourite. It’s a black panther that he’s currently cradling to his chest possessively. He told her to give it back and to take a powder but she’d refused. It’s her own fault. He’d growled a warning of what he was about to do and she _still_ refused.

She’d held her bleeding forearm and cried and naturally the grown-ups had come to _her_ defence.

“ _Let her play with it, Mar. You have so many other toys to play with._ ”

“ _So does she! This is mine!_ ”

“ _Enough of that, Marlon. In a pack we share._ ” Voices harsh. Of course. Be a good boy and obey. Never question. You don’t have a voice until you present. 

“ _No. This is mine. It was a gift. To_ me _! It’s mine._ ”

When they’d come close to take the panther from him he’d done the unthinkable he’d thought to do so many times but never dared. He’d growled a threat. A real one. A ‘You touch, I’ll hurt you badly.’ It had given them pause for a beat, then they’d really gotten angry. When uncle Dave came close despite the warning he’d attacked. He’d attacked with the intention to fight. He has no idea where this determination came from but he’s had enough of people invading _his_ room, taking _his_ stuff as if they had the right. Dave had shied back, appalled and shocked.

He’d retreated to his bed and curled over the panther protectively, growling, flaring, fangs dropped and when they moved closer again he’d done the second unthinkable - he’d growled a challenge. A challenge for rank. Against a grown-up.

They’d retreated then. “ _Suit yourself, then. You can stay in here until you’ve learned to play nice. And you can’t have your evening snack._ ”

He’d heard them when they closed the door. “ _What’s_ wrong _with that kit? He gets worse and worse for each year. I swear, he’ll never amount to anything with that attitude._ ”

It took a long while before he stopped growling and got out of bed to obsessively mark up the room. Every time he heard or smelled anyone pass in the hallway outside he’d scampered back to his bed to curl over his panther protectively and growl. He’d cried too. Hating the smell of saline and the hurting, abandoned feeling in his chest. And he was angry. So very angry. Not until midnight did anyone come. Aiden opened the door carefully to peek inside. With a low voice, he’d said “ _I don’t care what they say, if you want to come to my room you’re always welcome. Nina is sleeping with me too, so you know. And I saved this for you._ ” He’d set a plate with a sandwich on the ground and pushed it to slide towards the bed before gently closing the door.

The sandwich is still there, untouched.

Marlon aches on the inside. If he thinks about the argument he’ll start crying again. But it’s not what’s keeping him awake right now. He’s let his mind wander, looking at the frost forming on the window and his breath starting to mist. The cellar is never warm, to begin with. He wonders how Arvid’s doing? Maybe he’s freezing to death down there. He wonders what happened to Arvid’s family? What drove him to fight for those who must have bereaved him of his family? Why wasn’t he afraid? He must be so cold…

Finally, Marlon looks at the clock on the wall. It’s quarter past three. Everybody except those on perimeter guard must be asleep by now. He gets out of bed and tucks the panther in under the covers so he’ll be warm then he sneaks out of his room.

The big house is quiet. It’s okay. Nobody sneaks more silently than him. He doesn’t sleep as well as he should. Never did. Not even as a little kitling. He thinks too much. Thoughts that are better left for grown-ups according to grown-ups. They keep him awake or they wake him up. He hears they grown-ups talking about things and then he mulls it over for hours and hours until he can’t lay still. Either way, he’s learned to be silent not to wake anybody or they’ll chase him back into bed. It comes in handy now. Down the two flights of stairs, through the big entry hall with its domed ceiling high above. The giant chandelier was installed when the house was built but has been modified to have electric lights these days. He’s often wondered how they lit all the candles back then. It’s so gigantic and hangs so high up. Now the lights aren’t switched on, though. The vague light filters through the stained glass parts of the domes. During sunlight, they depict beautiful winged men and wolfcats holding swords or spreading their claws, but at night they cast strange shadows in the moonlight. Marlon isn’t afraid of shadows nor darkness. He scurries silently along the walls to the cellar door and goes inside. Here, the lights are on. That’s good. He’ll be able to see more than if he goes by his flare.

He scents the air when he nears the dungeon. The smell of fear and anger is muted to almost nothing but it reeks of pee and poop. He can smell pain and dried blood too. Those scents were there before too, only overshadowed by the sour fear. When he reaches the door he puts his ear to it and listens. He can hear teeth shattering but not much else. Wait. There’s a snore. Maybe they’re asleep and that’s why the fear and anger are so subdued?

Quietly, as quietly as he can, he slides the hatch to the peephole open, gets on his tiptoes and peers inside. All three prisoners hang limply. None seem awake. Diego is the one who’s soiled himself. It’s just a matter of time before they all do. Marlon is smart enough to figure that out. He gets stuck staring at Arvid, startled by what he sees. Arvid’s head is tilted to its side, rested against his up-stretched arm. His eyes are closed and he’s covered in fur. A thick, beautiful fur. The hair on his face is shorter, but his head, throat, any part of his body not covered by clothes - everywhere fur. His face, throat, hands and wrists are a creamy white, the rest is grey and reddish and yellowish browns. Just like a wolf. He hasn’t shifted much else. Perhaps his ears but it’s hard to see. There’s nothing to be seen of his straight, blond hair. His chest rises and falls evenly and Marlon thinks he’s asleep. But then Arvid opens his eyes and looks at him from under heavy lids, a low luminosity flare not giving away more than showing off colour. His look is unreadable.

Marlon isn’t startled by the existence of fur in general. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of the kits born in the pack have fur. He’s seen his own kitling photos - he himself had fur at birth. But an adult? Never. He wonders how Arvid does it. If he can learn to do it himself.

Arvid starts purring softly and soothingly. Like mom when he was a small kit. It takes him a moment to realise that Arvid is comforting _him_. He never reflected over his own scent but of course, Arvid could smell him, his lingering unrest, his sadness, his anger, and the traces of saline on his cheeks. But why on earth would Arvid comfort him when Arvid’s the one strung up waiting to die?

It squeezes something inside of him. It hurts and makes him feel warm. He watches Arvid until Arvid closes his eyes again. Arvid keeps purring that low, soothing purr for him. Marlon watches him for a bit longer, biting his lip. Then he carefully sits down, opens the food hatch so he can hear better and curls himself into a ball against the door to keep warm.

It isn't fair. Arvid shouldn't be in there with the two Progs. They should question him. Move him. Put him in a real room with a bed and a toilet. Feed him. There are a lot of empty rooms. Not everyone wants a room of their own. Most of them hadn't gotten one until they were well into their Juvies. Marlon's the odd one out. He doesn't remember it himself but he could barely speak decent sentences before he'd begun to ask when he'd get his own room. And then one day he got tired of waiting so he'd picked one out and marked it up. He'd started toting his toys in there for nap time. He'd heard the grown-ups tell him about it with affectionate laughter in their voices, shaking their heads. It’s still his room, though. 

So they should move Arvid somewhere comfortable where he doesn’t need fur or to sleep hanging by his wrists.

Marlon pets the door and starts purring back. He doesn’t know how to comfort Arvid. Arvid isn’t a sad, younger sibling. So he mimics how dad purrs for mom when she’s agitated and distressed. He’s not quite sure exactly what it means except it works for dad and calms mom. He thinks he hears a huff of amusement from inside the door but Arvid doesn’t let up his purring. Marlon closes his eyes as their purrs sync.

He wakes up with a jerk and blinks in confusion. He’s stiff and cold and it takes a beat before he understands where he is and why. He’s not sure what time it is or what woke him. The air no longer mists with each breath.

He hears a cough from inside the door and stands up to look through the peephole. They’re all still alive and asleep. Diego was the one to cough. Arvid appears deeply asleep, no longer covered in fur.

Marlon dusts himself off and hurries back with stiff joints. Nobody catches him but he hears voices. It tells him that the pack has woken up and started their day. Daylight dots the big entry hall in an array of colours from the stained glass windows in the domed ceiling.

When he gets back to his room he goes to the toilet to relieve himself, then eats the stale sandwich Aiden gave him and sets to the task to mark up his room and hide his stuff so his siblings can’t get to it without asking. And if they do, they’ll have to suit themselves when they trigger the traps he makes.

* * *


	4. The Aunt and The Uncle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kit Marlon's favourite relatives are back home from the war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you might break your brain a bit while you read. I know in fiction we're so keen on giving everyone individual names to keep track of them, but in reality, we often name our kids after relatives or people we love or admire. Here we get to meet the pair Marlon named his firstborns after. :)

* * *

He's outside playing perimeter guard in the sunshine. It's warm. The weather this autumn is fickle, going from chilly sleet to t-shirt warmth and sun. He isn't playing where the actual perimeter guards are patrolling or they'd just chase him home again. Today there are no lessons, so he prowls around the grounds pretending he’s guarding against dangerous people and enemy soldiers, helping in the fight. He wants to help in the war too but they won't let him. He thinks he’d be an asset. He can sneak like it’s nobody’s business. He could spy or run errands. Do _something_. But no. They barely let him learn how to fight. Michael and Luci do, though, if they’re alone and he badgers them enough. But they still won’t let him participate in the war. He turns around the corner of the house to prowl the garden. That’s when he hears it.

It’s faint, powerless, coming from a cellar vent hole by the base of the house wall. It has his heart drumming hard and fast in his chest. He sprints to the vent hole and goes down to his knees to listen. 

It’s a pack distress call, weak, more like you’d chant ‘please help me’ quietly to yourself when you know nobody will hear you anyway, rather than the blaring siren of an alarm. Most importantly, it isn’t _their_ call.

Marlon is up an running in a heartbeat, pounding the ground as fast as his legs can carry him. By the entrance, he collides with Jane but scrambles on without even apologising. He tears the cellar door open and runs down the stairs and through the corridor, turns into the dungeon corridor and almost falls over when he stops too suddenly by the door. The peephole latch is still open like he left it this morning. “You’re a Packrunner!” He exclaims as soon as he’s on his tiptoes and can see.

“You got me, Peepers,” Arvid says with a smirk but he isn’t looking too well. He still hasn’t soiled himself like the other two, but he’s panting, his eyelids are heavy and eyes glossy, sweat mats his hair making it stick to his skin and making the reddish stubble glisten. His pants are wet too, smelling of slick. He smells of suffering and pain. Yesterday it had been hard to figure out who smelt like what because of the sour stench of fear being so thick. Now only Allan smells of fear. But even that is dulled by his weakened state. Diego is the worst off. He’s not even conscious, coughing from what smells like pneumonia. Aside from rosy cheeks, he’s pale and blue-lipped. If it gets as cold as it was last night tonight too, he won’t make it.

“They won’t hear you. Your call is too silent. One needs to stand within yards of the vent hole to hear your call,” Marlon tells Arvid. He’s getting increasingly agitated. This isn’t right. You shouldn’t treat Packrunners like this. Not even enemies.

“I know. I know that, little one. But you know, the means are more important than the end.”

Marlon pushes himself away from the door and starts pacing the corridor back and forth in frustration. And what does that even mean? When the grown-ups do something Marlon considers wrong or stupid they often say it’s ‘means to an end’. Now Arvid says the opposite and Marlon doesn’t grasp it.

Inside the cell, he can hear them talking. “Come on, Allan. Time for your hourly exercise,” Arvid says. His voice tries for upbeat but he sounds tired. They’ve been hanging like that for two days and there’s no telling how long ago they were captured.

“What’s the point?” Allan argues defeatedly.

“It’ll hurt less if you use your muscles, you know that. Besides, you need to be fit for fight when your troops come to save you or you’ll never see your daughter again.”

Allan chuckles without any mirth. “You know they won’t send anyone to rescue us. We’re cannon fodder.”

“Hey, you never know. The gods are little turds that do what they will. How old is your daughter anyway?”

“She was four when I was conscripted. She turned six three weeks ago. Prettiest kit you ever saw with her big brown eyes and black locks, she―”

Marlon freezes and stares at nothing. _Conscripted._ That’s when they order people to fight whether they want to or not and if they don’t, they get labelled deserters and treated like enemies themselves.

Marlon doesn’t want to hear about Progs being conscripted away from their families against their will, doesn’t want to hear that they have kits waiting back home, and definitely doesn’t want to have a Packrunner chained up waiting to die in his cellar! 

He roars in frustration and extends his claws to attack the reinforced steel door, scratching and kicking. He knows it’s futile but he's just so upset. He needs an outlet. It's not fair. It's not right.

Arvid purrs a parental soothing again, just like he did when Marlon came here at night. “Calm down, kitty. There's nothing you can do but it's not your fault. None of this is your fault. This is war. Don't get yourself in trouble over us. Not over me. Come on, kitty. It's okay. We knew what was waiting for us. Walk away. You'll get in trouble otherwise. I don’t want that. Shhh,” he coos while purring.

Marlon stops but he's got a lump in his throat and he's about to start crying. He hecking hates it. He scratches the door a few more times and glares at the silvery scratch marks in the metal. His fingers are pounding painfully. He's dumb. He always does this. Drops fangs or claws too quickly without noticing the pain until it starts getting unbearable. _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ Aiden is constantly on him about it. The slower you do it the less it hurts he says. But Aunt Lucifer and dad shift super fast and painless. If they can do it so will he one day. He chirps unhappily and turns to run back up again like Arvid told him to.

* * *

There are people that can distract him even at his most broody, at least for a while. When he a while later catches the scent of his two favourite Alphas―Michael and Lucifer―in the world, he forgets that sad, hopeless feeling and instead trots following his nose to find them. He might love them more than mom and dad even. That might have to do with how dad’s away fighting most of the time and that mom got sick when he was born and it took her a full year before she was fit again, during that year aunt Lucifer had been nursing him, having him strapped to her chest or back almost every hour of the day.

He finds them in one of the lounge rooms. They’re still dressed in their dusty camouflage uniforms, leaned back in a corner each of a loveseat couch nursing tumblers of cognac, legs entangled since they're at their most relaxed when they're touching. 

He yips in delight and launches himself at them. Lucifer is closest. She has just enough time to put her drink away and spread her arms wide before he’s clinging to her neck, being hugged close. Luci rubs her temporal glands against him marking him up, chuckling.

“Hey, imp,” Michael says and leans in to mark him up as well. His salt-and-pepper beard scratches against Marlon’s cheek and neck.

Marlon straddles Luci’s thighs and leans back so he can touch Michael’s face. “This doesn’t look very neat. Why haven’t you shaved?”

The two Alphas laugh at him. They do that a lot but they smell happy so he tolerates it.

“We’ve been in the field for four months, Mar. Shaving isn’t always an option,” Michael replies with a grin.

“It is now. Could you get rid of it, please?”

Michael guffaws and Lucifer’s chest jumps while she laughs silently with a face-splitting grin. “I’m with the kit, Mikey. Take it off,” Luci smirks at her brother.

“I didn’t hear you complain last night,” Michael counters with a sly narrowing of his eyes.

“It wasn’t an option then, now was it?” Luci deadpans. They share one of those meaningful, lingering looks that grown-ups do and reach for their drinks. It means Michael will shave so Marlon’s happy.

“Is dad alive?” Marlon asks, jarring them out of it.

The two of them smile at him. “Matthew’s fine. He’ll be home next month if nothing happens.” Marlon’s dad is their younger sibling. Sometimes non-Packrunners find it confusing to keep track of Packrunner families. Marlon calls everyone aunt and uncle except his parents, same as some of his cousins call everyone mom and dad even when you can smell who are their real parents, which you can’t always do. But Marlon likes to make a distinction. It’s important to him who he shares blood with. It’s not supposed to be, but it is. His dad is the youngest of their Patriarch Jedikiah’s three kits, Michael’s the oldest with Lucifer in the middle. Michael and Luci never got mated. They say it doesn’t matter since Matthew got them the family they wanted anyway. Aunt Molly says ‘Alphas or not, it isn’t right how close those two are. They’ll never find mates if they only have eyes for each other.’ Aunt Molly’s dumb. But not dumb enough to say it to their face.

“And mom? Is she alive?”

There’s a moment when their smiles freeze and they share a look with a vague hint of distress in their scent, followed by faint sorrow. “Your mom is fine.”

“Lies,” Marlon calls them out right away. He’s not noseblind. They think he wouldn’t notice their distress? “Is she dead?” 

Luci grins, chest jumping of silent laughter again. “She’s not dead, Mar.”

Michael reaches out to pull Marlon into his lap. “Your mom got hurt. She’s fine. She will be fine.”

They still have that hint of distress and sorrow, though. “But…?” Marlon probes.

“But she got hurt…” Michael pauses, his hazel green eyes going serious. Marlon’s gut clenches nervously. “And the kit didn’t make it.”

“ _Ooh._ ” Marlon exhales in relief. “That’s okay. I’ve got enough siblings as it is anyway,” he dismisses with a handwave.

Luci and Michael blink at him for a beat, identical hazel green eyes equally flabbergasted. Then, as one, they burst out laughing, Michael hugging Marlon to his chest. The two of them couldn’t look more different, just like Marlon’s dad. Going only by looks you’d never think they are related. Lucifer has icy blond hair and sharp features, Michael has black hair, greying at the temples, and a strong jaw, Matthew has light brown hair and a sweet face. All three of them are tall and Lucifer is square and fairly flat chested despite being a woman. They’d all inherited their mother’s hazel green eyes, though. Marlon, however, has his grandfather’s icy blue.

“Sometimes I forget that kits don't bond to the unborn like we do,” Luci says laughingly at her brother, drying her eyes from laugh tears, then flinches as if she's forgotten that she has a black eye. Both of them are rather dinged up. It's not new. Even before they went off to war they were bruised and battered more often than not. Usually, they were the cause of each other's blemishes. That was before the war.

Marlon reaches out to touch Lucifer's eyelid gently. “What happened?"

“Oh, this?" Luci points at her eye and takes a sip of her drink then motions for Marlon to come to sit in her lap again. “We ambushed an enemy troop a few days back. Killed most, took a few prisoners. One of them almost got the better of me,” she says when Marlon slides over to curl against her chest.

"A feisty bugger,” Michael agrees and downs his drink, then refills it.

"Prisoners? I thought Timothy was the one who caught them?"

“We all helped to catch them. But Mikey and I stayed behind to make sure there were no survivors.”

"What are you going to do with them?”

"I don't know. We were of a mind to interrogate them but I very much doubt they have anything useful to say. They're cannon fodder. Jed's coming from the city later so we're waiting for him to decide.”

"The feisty one. Was it Arvid?”

"Arvid?”

"The Omega. We need to move him. He's a Primal and a Packrunner. It's not right for him to be hanging like that. And now he's got Heat sickness. He promised he'd tell us everything if we only moved him away from Allan and Diego. Diego won't survive the night. He's got pneumonia and his lips are blue. Allan is a conscript. He hasn't seen his daughter for two years. Arvid can shift faster than anyone I've ever seen. I gave him an apple,” Marlon babbles.

"Whoa, whoa. Take it easy there. You've spent a lot of time talking to them, I hear. How did you give him an apple? I thought Timothy has the keys?” Michael asks.

Marlon files away that piece of information. “Through the food hatch, dummy. I rolled it to his feet and he threw it up in the air and shifted to catch it with his jaws. He chomped it down in three bites and shifted back. It was a killer diller. He's a mercenary and they hadn't been paid for two months so he set the regulars up to be caught by us. He'll tell us all he knows if we just move him,” he repeats. It’s important that they know that he’s cooperative.

Michael and Lucifer exchange looks and rumble cryptically. It's their most annoying trait. They're so in tune with each other that they barely need to speak and when they speak primally they often use sounds that can mean anything depending on the context. Like saying just 'what?’ when they mean 'what colour did the bike have that we saw behind that bakery last week?’ No person that doesn't live in their heads would ever understand that. Lucifer nuzzles him. “Mar, desperate people will say anything. Just because someone tells you they're a Packrunner―”

"But he didn't! I heard him make a pack call through the vent. But quietly, like he didn't believe anyone would come. I told him he couldn't be heard and he said the means are more important than the end. What did he mean by that?”

"Probably that calling for them comforts him. That the act of calling makes him feel less alone. But you still shouldn't trust him. He'll lie to have a chance of freedom and revenge.”

"No. He told me when and where they were going to bomb us yesterday and it went down like he told me. They are going to bomb the shipyard at 0300 tonight to take out USS Victoria because she's not-so-cleverly hidden there,” Marlon quotes.

"What are you talking about? USS Victoria is in Newport," Michael says.

"One, are you sure? Two, do they know that?" Marlon points out with his nose in the air. "I'm serious. Arvid is legit. And you'll know that too when the bombs fall tonight. Please, just move him. He's a Packrunner. He shouldn't be treated like that.”

"Only Jed gets to make that call. But if the intel about tonight proves legit then maybe he'll approve a move.”

Marlon squirms in frustration. "Could you at least go down there and cure his Heat sickness?”

"His Heat sickness?” Michael and Lucifer snigger and share an amused look.

“Yes. You always get sick when you're in Heats or Ruts. But you can cure it.”

"And how do you propose I do that?” Michael asks with laughter in his voice.

Marlon rolls his eyes impatiently. “By sticking your penis in him, of course. Like you grown-ups always do. Then you're cured.”

The two Alphas laugh. "Mar, my innocent summer kit, we couldn't do that if he so begged us for it.”

"Why not? You don't like his scent?” He gets that that's important. You need to like someone's scent to stick your penis in them. He can understand the reasoning behind that. He doesn't even want to sleep in the same room as Timothy because he doesn't like his scent.

Michael reaches out to pull him back into his lap. They're always trying to be the one who gets to cuddle him and he likes that. “I like his scent just fine, Mar, but as long as he remains a prisoner none of us can knot him. Listen carefully because this is important. Even if we put him in lavish quarters and spoil him with our best food, as long as he's prevented from leaving knotting him in any way would equal a forced knotting. You hear that? Even if he begged, as long as there's no safe option for him to say no, walk away and choose someone else, it's a forced knotting. Same reason we don't knot employees.”

"But, he'd feel better,” Marlon pouts.

"In his body, perhaps, but not up here," Lucifer says and taps Marlon's temple.

Marlon sulks.

Michael and Luci look at him, then each other, then him again, their lips pulling up in amusement. "Looks like you got yourself a kitty crush on that Merc,” Lucifer teases.

"Can't say I blame you,” Michael says. “That O is a real breeder."

Lucifer jabs her elbow hard into Michael's side.

"Ow! Am I not right? Tell me I'm not right?" Michael protests.

Marlon knows what a breeder is. It's both a compliment and an insult, most commonly used for Alphas. It's someone you appreciate for their genetics but not for themselves. You want them to impregnate you but don't want them to mate and raise the kit with you. It's used about Omegas by Alphas too like Michael just did, just not as commonly. It's complicated. When an Alpha says it, it means that they want to stick their penis in but they refrain because of some major flaw in that person.

Arvid has no flaws, they're just mean.

“You are, but we should not say things like that in front of kits,” Lucifer scolds.

"Relax. It's not like Mar hasn't heard it before.”

"True. But we're talking about his kitty crush now.”

“I don't have a crush," Marlon argues.

Michael sighs and runs his fingers through Marlon's hair. “Marlon. Listen, Arvid, was his name Arvid?” Marlon nods. "Right. Arvid won't leave here alive. If Jedikiah agrees and if the intel proves solid then maybe we can move him to the west wing and offer a little more comfort before we kill him. But that decision is above our pay grade.”

There's a stupid lump in Marlon's throat. It's not right. “But he's a Packrunner," he argues futilely.

Both the adults turn gentler then, smelling his sorrow.

“Hey..." Lucifer cajoles, “I can give you one promise if it means that much to you. After he dies, we’ll burn him properly so he finds his way to the other side without any floundering. He gets to go home to his lost loved ones instead of being thrown in a ditch like the others. Okay? _That_ I can promise.”

It's not remotely enough but Marlon nods anyway. If Lucifer has promised then Jedikiah has to uphold that promise. “Arvid hasn't soiled himself like the other two yet. Is it because he's an Omega?”

Michael’s lips pull up in a lopsided smirk. He takes another sip of his drink. "You could say that. Most likely it's because he's in Heat. When we go into Rut or Heat part of the body shuts down, sort of. It makes it a lot easier to stay knotted together for a long time if you don’t have to go to the toilet.”

"Is that why you get sick?” Everything about the whole knotting business seems stupid and unnecessarily complicated. He gets that you need to stick your penis into people to make kits. All animals do that one way or another. He even gets the whole pop a knot inside and be stuck together for a while so nobody else can stick their penis in while the kit is made. But humans and other morphic species take it to the extreme. It seems that as soon as you present you want to poke the penis into everyone or be poked with it. Marlon's never going to get like that.

Tonight they’re patient with his questions. Luci does an aborted nod. "We don't get sick as such. Our temperatures are elevated to make it easier for our bodies to make a kit.” Marlon plucks her glass out of her hand and moves it towards his mouth to drink but Michael takes it from him before he has a chance. Sometimes he'll manage to dip his tongue in the strong liquor before they snatch it away from him. He's never actually managed to taste it so he doesn't know what the big deal is but it must be good since all the adults drink it.

"It's stupid and I don't understand it.”

"You will when you present.” Always with that answer. Ask about the body or why grown-ups act stupidly sometimes and it’s always ‘You’ll understand when you present’. He hates it. 

"No, I won't. I would if you could only get pregnant while in Heat but Molly got pregnant when James was at home visiting for a week and I know for a fact that she wasn't in Heat then,” he argues. "What really happens in the body when you present? We were supposed to read about it in school before you stopped me from going and Antony jumped me up to study with the Juvies so the slow kits won't be prevented from learning just because I'm smarter.”

"Don't forget, more modest,” Lucifer jokes. The two of them snigger at him with mischief in their eyes.

"Har har. Very funny. It's not boasting if it's the truth. It was a problem in school too. Like when we read about the Napa valley pact. I asked the teacher what effect it had on the people and society in the valley because it wasn't mentioned in the book, it just said that the Montgomery pack and the Ellis pack made a lot of money from diverting the river. But there's a forty-year gap between the pact and the next time the area gets mentioned, and during that time it went from predominantly Packrunners to predominantly Conservatives with no mention of a new influx of people, sickness, or any wars. Plus, both the Montgomery and Ellis pack had lost a lot of power and disappeared for no apparent reason. I think those things are connected but the teacher didn't know. Then Murphy complained about how hard it is to understand the pact, to begin with. Which it wasn't but he's slow.”

"You think everyone is slow,” Luci points out affectionately and cuddles up to Michael.

They are. It's not his fault. “Presenting?" he prompts so they won't get sidetracked.

"Okay, presenting. Right now you have a womb inside of you as well as the makings for producing fertile sperms and popping a knot. When you present, what happens is that the body picks one gender, reabsorbs the parts it doesn't need and activates the new functions. That period when a Juvie gets the marker of a gender in their scent but still keeps the Juvie marker? That's because the body starts absorbing the key features of the other gender. Then it starts activating the other functions. When it's done it switches on the sex drive and some bonding hormones you don't have as a kit and _Bam_ , the Juvie marker disappears.”

“Why don't we keep both?”

"Some do. It's not unheard of. But it takes a great toll on the body to be in a Heat or Rut, not to mention to be pregnant. Imagine getting sick, as you call it, twice a month instead of once. Or to be pregnant while still going into Ruts.”

"I'm going to choose to be an Omega. But I won't be doing any of that penis poking. It seems too impractical and a bit gross. And I'm going to get mated to you two and Aiden. Maybe dad too.”

Both of them snigger. “Sure you will. Sure you will," Lucifer says with a belittling tone to her voice.

"Mar, if you present as an Omega you’ll think we stink and get annoyed whenever we’re near you. You’ll feel restless and unhappy. That’s the wanderlust kicking in. Eventually, you’ll leave on your own accord,” Michael explains. 

Marlon has heard about this. He knows that Omegas get wanderlust. He just doesn’t believe he’d ever feel repulsed by these two or that he’d want to leave them. “If you say so,” he says skeptically and curls closer to Michael to rest his ear against his chest so he can hear the heart. He closes his eyes and just enjoys having them at home. They smell dirty and dusty and achey but their scents of happiness and contentment are much stronger than anything else. It’s soothing like few other things can be.

The two of them rumble amongst themselves occasionally, small purrs and chirps Marlon doesn’t even try to decipher. He finds the Primal language harder to learn than spoken language. Not the gestures and body language, but the sounds. They say he was a late talker too. Apparently, they’d all worried there was something wrong with him. Now Dave complains that they can’t get him to shut up. He feels Michael and Luci shifting even closer to each other followed by a sticky sound that means they’re kissing. They do that a lot. It’s gross but he tolerates it because it means they’re happy and relaxed.

It can also mean they’re distracted…

Marlon opens his eyes and spots Michael’s drink on the side-table. Slowly, holding his breath not to alert them he reaches out for it. Michael’s hand shoots out to smack his fingers before he’s even halfway. He yelps and retracts his hand to find them sniggering at him. “Can I watch the planes tonight? We won't be in any danger since they'll bomb the shipyard, not us.”

“No, you can't."

Aunt Jane sticks her head into the room. "You're not giving the kit alcohol, are you?”

Michael huffs indignantly. “I would never! How could you even think that about us?” he says and hands his glass over to Marlon. Marlon takes a large gulp before they have the chance to change their minds, then sputters and gags when the strong liquid burns his throat and belly, making every hair stand on end. Both of them laugh at him.

Jane shakes her head smelling of annoyance and amusement. "And they wonder where he gets it from," she mutters to herself and leaves.

* * *


	5. Rhetoric is everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the adults won't listen to him, he has to take matters into his own hands. Kit Marlon has a plan.

* * *

He's in one of the bathrooms brushing his teeth when he hears voices through the vent. This bathroom is close to the conference room and has the softest towels so Marlon often goes here instead of to his own bathroom. At least, that is what he'll say if asked. The voices in the vent are the real reason. He's spent a lot of time in here listening in on meetings.

_“...No. It doesn't matter. Any intel he has will soon be obsolete.”_

_“The kit says he's a Packrunner. He should at least be treated as such. It's not dignified―”_

_"No. He chose to be our enemy and he'll suffer the consequences. He can hang there until he rots.”_

* * *

It's nearing midnight and Marlon can't sleep. They're going to let Arvid hang there until he dies. Jed didn't care about him being a Packrunner. Their Main, Karen, is still out in the field and can't overthrow Jedikiah's decision. Marlon has barely seen his grandparents for the last couple of years. They do come home, Jed more often than Karen since Jed stays in the city to handle the business side of things. He misses curling up with his head on Jed or Karen’s belly to sleep, lulled by their sleep-purr. Jed’s at home but Marlon won’t go to his room. He’s sad, and mad at his grandfather. It’s not right.

Marlon sits up in his bed. It's not right. He makes a decision. Let's see how much the grown-ups like it when people march into their rooms to steal stuff.

He slides out of bed and gets dressed, goes to his desk, writes a short letter, takes an empty bag and leaves his room.

He pokes his head into Michael's room. It should be empty since there are no fresh markings on the door frame but you never know. 

It's empty.

He hurries inside and goes to the wardrobe where he picks some clothes out to stuff in the bag.

Next stop requires a little more effort to find in the big mansion. Not everyone have their own room and even those that do may not sleep there. Any pack home has big beds. For the most part people sleep together. To make it easier to find people you simply mark the door frame when you enter the intended sleeping spot. He finds what he’s looking for. Dave, Timothy, Nina and Clara sleeping together. The two Alphas curled around the Juvie and the kit protectively. They’re all deeply asleep.

Or so he thinks.

Nina raises her head when he starts rifling through discarded day-wear. “Mar?” she whispers groggily. “What are you doing?”

Marlon’s heart leaps in fright as he spins around to look at her. “Looking for something stolen,” he whispers back, mouth dry. It isn’t. Yet.

Nina rubs one eye and blinks tiredly first at him then at Clara and then back at him again. “You need it now? Come to bed instead.” Her hushed voice is raspy from sleep.

“No. I need it now.”

“Want me to help you look?”

The burst of affection in his chest almost gives him a bad conscience. Clara’s always taking things from him and Nina knows it. All their day-wear has been discarded on the same pile, so naturally she’s jumping to conclusions. The grown-ups say his little sister takes things from him because she looks up to him but he knows better. Clara is a plague. They aren’t really related but you can’t say that because few things agitate grown-ups as much as screaming ‘She’s not my sister!’ at them. “No. But thanks. Go back to sleep.”

Nina mumbles something unintelligible and lays her head back down, closing her eyes.

Marlon refrains from sighing in relief and goes back to his mission. His bigger sister is the best sister in the world when she isn’t growling at him to go away and leave her be. He finds what he’s looking for in a pant-pocket and puts it in his own pocket, then leaves the room.

Last stop is the kitchen. It’s supposed to be empty but it isn’t. He smells aunt Jane still in there. For a moment he debates whether he should abandon this part of his plan. Then he thinks about his interaction with Nina and what grandpa Jed always says; Rhetoric is everything. It means that things can mean different things depending on what words you use. You can say one thing and mean something completely different without lying. He doesn’t like to lie to his family but he doesn’t necessarily have to tell the truth. He hadn’t with Nina, after all. The thing he took is stolen _now_ so it wasn’t a lie.

He takes a deep breath to steel himself and marches into the kitchen bold as brass. Aunt Jane is cleaning up after the evening snack time. She could have done that sooner but judging by scent uncle Antony has distracted her by knotting her. She looks up when he enters and gives him a little smile. “Mar. Shouldn’t you be asleep by now?”

“I could say the same for you,” he sasses. “Did you know uncle Dave tried to starve me yesterday?” he asks and starts picking apples out of a bowl shoving them into his bag.

She huffs in amusement and smiles broadly at him. “I wouldn’t call denying you your evening snack starving, Mar. You taking preemptive measures? If you’re going to hide food in your room, don’t forget where you’ve stashed it or it’ll mold.”

Marlon makes a beeline for the cupboard to get bread. “Have I ever forgotten where I keep anything that’s mine?”

She chuckles and goes to the ice box to get butter, cheese and ham for him. “You’ve got a point. Sandwiches won’t keep well, though. You can take that little jar of honey and the smoked sausage,” she says and points to one of the shelves in the cupboard.

Marlon doesn’t particularly like honey but packs it either way. “Why honey?”

“It keeps forever and is great when you need an energy boost quickly. It also has healing properties. Come here and give me the bread and I’ll make the sandwich for you. Then it’s straight off to bed with you.”

“I want two. Make them double and wrap them in paper,” he requests. “I’m not going to die from starvation.” 

Jane laughs. She’s in a good mood. She always is when they have people returning from the battle field. She can be really stern but she's not unreasonable. Marlon thinks she might be the one who’s caught him being awake when he shouldn't the most often. “No, you won't. Not on my watch. You want me to read you a bedtime story?”

That offer is so good he almost considers it. Jane doesn't read the same books to him as the others. She chooses books that are captivating and thick, not meant for kits. She might be the reason he learned to read so early. Her books are too thick to finish in one go so he'd been motivated to learn to read so he could find out what happens next without having to wait. Her mate, uncle Josh, is the worst bedtime reader. He doesn't do the voices and inflictions and chooses books with pictures in them that he thinks a kit Marlon's age should like. Those aren't even right for the really slow kits. “No thanks. I need to put the food where I planned to," he answers cryptically. It's not a lie.

"Alright, sweetie. Then straight to bed with you, you hear?”

Instead of answering he goes to give her an affectionate temple rub. If you promise something you need to keep it. But if you say nothing at all…? Rhetoric is everything.

* * *

“Arvid?"

Arvid looks up and chirps a wordless greeting. Beside him, Diego is already dead. Marlon would be staring except there's no time to gawk. “Hey, Peepers. That's an interesting mix of smells on you. What are you up to?”

“I want to make a deal with you."

"A deal?” Arvid sways in his chains and flares. "I'm all ears,” he says with tired amusement.

“You're sure they're going to bomb the shipyard?"

“No. Those were the plans before I got captured, kitty, but battle plans go obsolete rather quickly in wartime.”

_Obsolete_. That's what Jedikiah said.

“But you think so?"

“Yes."

“Okay. I want to see the bombs fall but they won't let me."

“Uh-huh. And what do you propose I do about that?”

"I want you to tell me everything you know that you think can be of value to my side in the war, and I want you to make sure I get to see the bombs tonight. Oh, and you can't hurt anyone in my family.”

Arvid has turned dead serious. "Not even in self defense? And when you say family, are we talking blood related or pack?”

"Pack,” Marlon deadpans, then hesitates. If he makes Arvid promise not to _hurt_ anyone and he's attacked or even challenged, he’d doom Arvid to an unfair fate. What if he and Michael got mated in the future and he’d have to assert his position in the pack? (Not that it was likely to happen.) If he can’t hurt anyone he’d be forced to always back down. Even fat-heads like Dave would be placed above him in rank because of a shitty promise. Or what if during battle Arvid was ordered to set a bomb off or something, and didn’t know a pack member was where the bomb was? How would Arvid be able to do his job? Rhetoric is everything. “And you can defend yourself but only to the extent of doing as little harm as possible. And you can’t knowingly kill anyone from my pack.”

Arvid chuckles. “Knowingly? Aren’t you too young to think of the possibility that―. No, nevermind. If you use that word then you’re obviously not too young. Okay. So what’s the tradeoff? What do I get in return?”

“I’m moving you.”

Arvid is still for a beat before he huffs and shakes his head. “Kit, I told you, don’t get yourself in trouble over me.”

“I get in trouble over me. You’re just―” Marlon waves his hand dismissively in search for words even though Arvid can’t see it. “―collateral damage,” he finishes.

Arvid laughs. A deep belly laugh with a hysteric edge. 

“Is that a no?” Marlon snarls in annoyance, a sense of urgency scratching his belly.

Arvid stops laughing and meets his gaze. “No, it’s a yes. Yes. I’ll do whatever you wish if you can just get me a more uplifting roomie than our old pal Diego over here.”

For a moment Marlon just stares at him, panic clawing his inside and heart hammering in apprehension and excitement. If he follows through with this there will be hell to pay.

‘ _If?_ ’

There’s no ‘if’ here. He’s doing it, end of story.

He steps away from the door and takes the keys he stole from his pocket. His palm is sweaty. He puts the key in the lock, turns, then spins the big wheel handle. The steel bars inside slide out of their slots almost soundlessly, releasing a whiff of oils. Then, a tug and the heavy door opens.

He holds his breath staring wide eyed, heart beating so hard it almost hurts. Arvid has him in razor focus but doesn’t say anything, as if words might get him to change his mind.

Allan is quiet too, looking at him but Marlon ignores the him. He takes a deep breath of resolve, drops his bag outside the door and steps inside. He skips over a rank puddle of pee under Diego to get to Arvid, and makes short work of unlocking the cuffs holding the merc. He has to climb _on_ Arvid to unlock the cuffs over his head. It’s incredibly rude to get so close without proper introduction and invitation but the situation warrants it. Arvid gasps and smells of pain when Marlon grabs his shoulder to reach and when he’s free of the cuffs and Marlon has climbed down to stand in front of him, he lowers his arms incrementally slow with a grimace of pain, eyes squeezed shut.

This close you can both see and smell how much dirt and grime Arvid's covered in. The slick―not an unpleasant scent, even if Marlon doesn't get why it drives adults dumb―neutralizes the worst of it. But the sweat has gone stale and rank, smelling strongly. Arvid had stubble when Marlon first saw him. It's grown long enough to nearly classify as a short beard. It's coppery red unlike the blond hair on his head. Marlon can also smell small wounds that are well on their way to become infected. They need to be cleaned and cared for but now’s not the time. Arvid rolls his shoulders, joints popping.

“We're on a time crunch here," Marlon says impatiently. 

Arvid opens his eyes, he looks down at Marlon, not saying anything. There’s a tense feeling in the room as if everything is vibrating like a bowstring pulled too taunt. Arvid huffs, lips pulling up in a slow smirk to reveal fully dropped fangs. He smells of excitement and narrows his eyes.

A thrill of fear runs down Marlon’s spine. It doesn’t last. Arvid had given him a Packrunner’s promise not to hurt anyone in his family except for in self defense and he’s not threatening Arvid. He reaches out and tugs loosely in Arvid’s dirty sleeve. “We need to scram unless you’d rather stay in here,” he reminds the merc.

Suddenly Allan trashes in his chains. “Take him! Come on, Matsson! Take him, and set me free!”

Marlon takes two steps back, retreating towards the door with sudden uncertainty.

Arvid chuckles and looks at Allan. “Yeah… You know I was never going to do that, Allan,” he mocks. “If the Americans hadn’t gotten you I’d have killed you myself. Sorry. I like you but those were my orders.” He smiles wider, cruelly, doesn’t look sorry at all.

Allan looks stunned. “You can’t just leave me? After all we’ve gone through?”

Arvid shrugs nonchalantly. “Sure, I can. Toodeloo.” He waves teasingly, wiggling his fingers, then follows Marlon out the door. Marlon hurries to close the door and turn the lock. Inside Allan is screaming, begging for Arvid to help him. It hurts inside of Marlon. Briefly, he thinks of a 6 year old stranger with big, brown eyes who will never see her father again. He takes a letter from his pocket and puts it on the ground beside the door then puts the keys on top of it. It's an explanation letter, _not_ an apology.

Arvid starts walking in the direction of the cellar entrance.

“Not that way. This way,” Marlon urges, pointing in the opposite direction.

Arvid looks down the corridor leading towards freedom for what feels like ages. Then he slaps on a grin that even Marlon can see how fake it is. “Lead the way, Peepers.”

* * *

“You really took me for my word when I said ‘deeper, danker hole’, didn’t you?” Arvid states and sputters as a tree root hits his face. Here he has to walk crouched while Marlon is trotting easily in front of him. Marlon had taken them to one of the secret entrances to the sub levels. Around the entrances in the sub-level there had been attempts to build corridors, but the further they got from there the tunnels turned into hollowed out earth and stone or even natural caverns. They’ve left the man-made tunnels behind and are following a hollow that Marlon thinks used to be an underground river. Naturally, there’s no electricity down here but both of them are flaring their brightest so there’s no need. It’s also warmer here than it had been in the dungeon. Marlon never thought about that before but files that information away for the future. They’re no longer under the mansion. Marlon knows this because tree roots hang scattered from the ceiling and there are no indoor trees in his home.

Some earth falls from above. Arvid stops dead and crouches low with a burst of fear in his scent. “Is it three o’clock already? Are they bombing?”

Marlon throws a glance over his shoulder. “No. Don’t worry about it. It does that sometimes,” he dismisses.

“What? The roof falls in sometimes and I’m not to worry about it?” Arvid’s eyes are comically round.

Marlon sniggers and hurries onward. “It’s dirt. Worst case, we can dig ourselves out. No biggie.”

“You think it’s funny? You’re one mad kitty. You know how hard it is for the soul to find its way to its pack if you die underground?”

“Then don’t die,” Marlon retorts without looking back, thrilling at Arvid’s surprised laughter following behind.

They reach a tunnel where there’s a big boulder atop a crushed skeleton of a person who had found trouble they couldn’t dig their way out of. Opposite of the boulder there’s a hole by the ground - a much smaller tunnel. Marlon stops to take his bag off his shoulder and pushes it inside then squeezes in after it. He crawls forward pushing the bag in front of him until he notices Arvid isn’t following. “Oh, heck, I forgot you’re big,” he curses and backs out again while letting his claws grow, _trying_ to make the shift slowly. It’s so hard to hold back. His brain is like ‘I need claws’ and his body goes ‘ _Bam. Claws._ ’ In about fifteen minutes he’ll need his hands to climb and then crippling pain in his fingers won’t do him any good.

Arvid’s sitting on his heels, arms crossed over his knees with a dejected, sceptical expression when Marlon emerges.

“It’s not a problem,” Marlon reassures. “It’s only a tight squeeze in the beginning. Then even you can crawl on all fours, okay? I’m just gonna make it larger for you.”

Arvid answers with a non-committal sound that sounds more suffering than anything else. Marlon smirks briefly and starts scraping with his claws on the opening to enlarge it. The earth here is dry and hard and comes loose in clumps when he uses his sharp claws. They’re not ideal for digging―too sharp and curved―but it’s better than using just your nails. Arvid heaves a sigh and pushes him partly out of the way to start digging himself. He’s shifted his hands too, even covered his fingers with protective fur. His claws are thick, blunter and straighter, looking more like a dog’s claws, and he’s _much_ more effective, making short work of broadening the entrance while Marlon shuffles loose earth out of the way.

“I think you’ll fit through it now,” Marlon deems and crawls back inside. This time Arvid follows, even if it is a tight squeeze for him the first couple of feet. Arvid’s a bit larger than Marlon had accounted for and has to belly crawl even when it gets roomier. Marlon gets a pretty good lead before he hears a blood-curdling shriek of fear behind him. His heart takes a leap of fright and he quickly twists around to see what’s happening.

Arvid starts laughing hysterically, close to tears. He’s sweating profusely and his eyes look haunted. There’s a large spider crawling over his face. “I’m okay! I’m fine. Lovely. Yes, everything’s lovely,” he rambles with a suffering grin.

Marlon scoffs in annoyance and turns to keep moving forward. “It’s just a spider,” he mutters. He can hear that Arvid follows behind despite the foolish hysteria over a bug.

“Hey, Peepers. A question. I know it’s dumb, but humour me, okay?” Arvid goes on with a strained voice. 

“Shoot.”

“I didn’t die, did I? You’re not Hades come to lure me down to the underworld so I can never see my pack again, are you? Because I swear I thought I’d last another week before my light went out.”

Marlon chuckles and turns his head to grin at Arvid. “You think Hades looks like a kit?”

“I think Hades is a god that can look however darn well he pleases. And if I was a god I’d choose to have eyes like yours too. That colour is magnificent.”

Marlon’s cheeks heat up in pleasure. He isn’t even trying to hold back his purr as he looks away to move forward. “No, you’re not dead. And if it makes any difference, I tried to get them to move you. They wouldn’t. But Aunt Lucifer did promise that they’d burn your body properly so you’d have a straight passage to your loved ones instead of getting dumped in a ditch like the Progs.”

“That… that is reassuring. Thank you. I much prefer not becoming a ‘body’ anytime soon, though.”

“Then don’t. We’re almost by the big cave. There’s a downward climb soon, after that we can trot without crouching. I want to make good time so don’t dawdle to admire the invertebrates,” he teases.

Arvid laughs then mutters ‘ _Jävla rackarunge_ ,’ under his breath. Marlon doesn’t know what language it is but he recognises the tone. It sounds like Michael when he affectionately calls Marlon a little twerp.

They make good time once they reach the deep cave. They jog along jagged stalagmites and duck under stalactites, only pausing beside a small stream so Arvid can drink. The climb upward is steep and narrow but they can smell the fresh air coming from above so Arvid goes on determination alone, Marlon thinks, when he needs to squeeze himself through a narrow hole the last couple of feet. Marlon has to help pulling him through the narrow gap since it’s solid rock and can’t be widened by digging.

They emerge on a rock formation in the woods not far from the bridge. In the distance they can see the glittering city lights. Arvid sniffs the air then quickly climbs down to stand behind a rock to relieve himself. Marlon has to giggle at the sound of pure pleasure he does when he starts peeing. He giggles more at how long it goes on. He doesn’t look at Arvid, granting him privacy when Arvid sidesteps and crouches down to poop. He smirks at the way Arvid curses under his breath about the leaves he uses to dry himself being sub par for the purpose.

Arvid climbs up to him again once he’s done, looking a lot better than he’s done up until now. “Okay, kitty, what now?”

Marlon digs into his bag and takes up the sandwiches, apples, honey and sausage he’d packed. “First, you eat.”

“You brought it for me?” Arvid looks insultingly surprised.

“Yes. I’m not the one in Heat, now am I?” Marlon snarks in annoyance. You got to make Omegas in Heat eat. Everybody knows that.

Arvid smiles, still looking annoyedly surprised, but he smells of happiness which is the first time Marlon’s smelt that on him so it’s okay.

Arvid takes the offered bounty after a beat of hesitation, then tears into it desperately. The first sandwich goes down in three bites without chewing and this time Marlon can see that Arvid shifts his throat to make that possible. “Hey, hey. Take it easy or you’ll get stomach cramps. We’ve got time. Aren’t Os in Heat supposed to lack appetite anyway?”

“You try starving for five days,” Arvid retorts. He does slow down his eating somewhat, though.

Marlon climbs up to perch on a rock to watch him gobble the food ungracefully. “Are you not human?” he asks.

Arvid freezes with the sausage halfway to his mouth, suddenly guarded eyes turning to watch Marlon, closing his mouth slowly.

“I’ve never seen an adult with fur before,” Marlon clarifies. “Many kitlings are born with fur. I know I was. But I’ve never seen an adult with fur. How do you do that? You think I could learn how to?”

The guarded expression melts away as Arvid reuptakes his chewing. “For a moment there I forgot kitty curiosity isn’t malevolent,” he says after he’s swallowed. “I’ve hung around with Progs too much lately.” He catches the unintended pun and huffs in amusement. “Literally.”

Marlon’s lips twitch in amusement but he keeps silent waiting for an answer.

Arvid takes another bite and talks around the chew. “I’m as human as anyone, Peepers. Maybe aside from the Demon. The jury’s still out on that one. But I _am_ a mutt.”

Marlon scrunches up his face in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“A mongrel. A mix-breed.” Arvid sees that Marlon still isn’t following and rolls his eyes. “You know humans have developed from different species that met in the middle?”

Marlon nods.

“Well, in Sweden where I was born Direwolves were our ancestors. At least up north. I’m from the south. A place called Skåne. And down there we had a lot of people from the continent coming in. Down on the continent the European wolfcat is the most common ancestor. So my mom, a wolfcat like yourself, met my dad, a direwolf, and they made me. Mix-breed.”

“Is that why you can grow a fur?”

Arvid chuckles and shakes his head, chipmunking a piece of apple. “No. You said you were born with fur?” Marlon nods. “Do you ever get that sun-burnt feeling in your skin when you drop fangs or shift your claws, or, or even when you flare?” Arvid asks.

“You mean when my skin feels like I’m blushing along with a prickling feeling? Like pins and needles but really faint?” That happens all the time. Marlon doesn’t even make note of it anymore. It doesn’t hurt. On the contrary, it’s almost pleasant.

“That’s it, kit. Just say yes to it the same way you say yes to your fangs or claws. When it comes to shifting we learn to say no to the body when it tries, rather than the other way around. So when you get that sensation you can say yes instead and you’ll be able to pelt as well as I,” Arvid explains.

Nobody’s explained to him how to shift before and now he understands why. It’s almost impossible to explain in a reasonable way. Not that he’s needed an explanation. Shifting is something you just know how to do. He’s never _not_ known how to claw, teeth, flare, and drop fangs. Those are innate abilities that you learn how to control, a lot through watching others. You see others do it and try to do it the way it looks, but describing it?

He tries to think of himself having fur but nothing happens. So he closes his eyes and concentrates. Thinking the word ‘yes’ isn’t working. Arvid had mentioned that sunburnt feeling you get when you drop fangs so Marlon drops fangs as slowly as he has the patience to. To him, it’s almost more painful to do it slowly because then he’s aware of the painful feeling, like someone compresses his skull and jaws with metal bands. When he does it fast the pain will come after a while but be ten times worse. Now, though, he’s focusing on the warm, tingling sensation in his skin.

There it is.

He tries really hard to say 'yes’. How do you follow such vague instructions? Nothing happens. His frustration translates into his fangs shooting down extra long but the only thing that happens is that the sunburn-sensation disappearing.

“There you are! Heck, you're a Natural like me. One can never know with you wolfcats. Direwolves are all Naturals, coloured like wolves. But you wolfcats can have any darn colour or pattern. I've even seen a calico guy.”

Marlon startles when Arvid speaks. He opens his eyes to see Arvid smile proudly at him, lips closed around chewing. His eyelids feel funny, thicker. He lifts a hand to touch his face but sucks in a breath when he lays eyes on his hand. The palm looks normal but the top is covered in short, tawny fur. He looks more closely. The tip of each hair is umber on top but his wrists are more reddish. “Natural. You mean my colour?"

“Mhm. Suits you."

Marlon feels his face. It's covered in fur too. “It's so short," he complains with a mix of elation at his success and disappointment for its length.

Arvid chuckles. “It’s your first try. It’ll get longer. I recommend practising in front of a mirror. I’ve found it’s easier to get the results you want while shifting if you get visual confirmation of the results when you learn new moves.”

“What do I look like?”

“A cougar. Or a tawny cat. It’s hard to say when you’re wearing clothes. Now put that fur away. If an enemy sees you they’ll shoot on sight. Plus, here in America I’ve found both Conservatives and Primals to get uncomfortable if you pelt in public. In the country I was born it was pretty standard, especially up north where it’s cold. Sweden, Finland and Norway are dominated by Packrunners and Primals. If you ever visit Sweden anyone can by law ask you to do a shift at any time. It became law after the Union tried to invade us. Not that everybody can pelt but dropping fangs or clawing will do. Progs don’t shift, see?”

That sounds hecking fantastic. They should implement a law like that here too. “So it’s impossible for the Progs to send people in undercover…” Marlon muses.

“You got it. It’s not strictly impossible since there are always those willing and able to do anything to get to their goal, but they usually fail to realise that if you join a pack to spy on them you’ll be bonded into it and pack bonds are _strong_. I’ve heard stories of Prog-spies ending up confessing everything because of the pack bond they forged. You’d never guess it, but Progs convert to Packrunning with a lot more ease than Conservatives do. I don’t get what the big deal is for Conservatives, anyway.” Arvid gestures haphazardly at the dark velvet sky where the moon is full and stars twinkle. “All their god can do is look pretty. Any god of fire or water can blind him and still they devote themselves like nothing else.”

Marlon looks up and searches out the bright star of the one god in the sky. From what they were taught in school Conservatives believe that the One god created everything, including the other gods. Some even thought that there are no other gods. “What do you mean, blind him?” he asks and slips down to sit on the rock Arvid is leaning against. He’s still touching his face when he retracts his fangs and feels his short fur disappear under his fingers. It’s a weird sensation.

“Fire causes smoke, clouds are just water vapours. As high up as the One is, a cloudy day he won’t be able to see anything, then what’s the point?”

Marlon nods sagely in response. It makes sense. Plus, when you pay homage to smaller gods there’s an actual chance the god may―for good or bad―pause to pay attention to you. Their pack’s chosen deity is Athena, goddess of war strategy and intelligence. There has always been warriors in their family and they became leaders and officers. He likes how Arvid talks to him. Like an equal - not talking down to him as if he can’t understand anything just because he’s a kit.

Arvid opens the lid to the small honey jar and coos in delight. “Darn, Peepers! Somebody raised you right. Did you know honey is the best thing to give an O in Heat if you can’t give them a full meal or if they are too nauseous to eat? It’ll perk you right up between rounds. I swear, if you were an Alpha I’d be presenting so hard right now you wouldn’t believe,” he says, then bursts out laughing at the way Marlon’s face scrunches up in a grossed out grimace. “Sorry, kit. I just meant that you’ve been ticking off every box of how to care for an O in Heat in order. You know your stuff. Raised right. That’s all. I’m not propositioning you. I may not be sane but I’m not _that_ insane.”

Marlon tries to hide how his chest warms with pride, but his content scent might give it away. It feels good to be told you’re doing something right for a change. “I didn’t think you did, but the whole penis poking business seems inconvenient and messy.”

Arvid huffs with a lopsided smirk. “Agreed. It’s a hassle. Life would run a lot smoother without Heats. But you know what?” He leans closer with a conspiratorial expression and lowers his voice. “It feels so darn good that I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He sits up straight again and sticks his fingers into the honey then sucks it off greedily. “The biggest backside is how badly your pants chafe when you’re in Heat. I’ve heard they’ve invented a new kind of pants with some special fabric that eliminates the chafing, that you can open from the back so you don’t have to pull them down to be knotted. They cost an arm and a leg but I’d sure like to get my hands on a pair of those. I used to wear skirts all the time but once I joined the fighting that wasn’t convenient anymore.”

All the Os in Marlon’s pack wear them when they’re not wearing skirts. He never considered how expensive they might be. Had he known, he’d have stolen clothes from Molly instead of Michael. But then again, they might not have fit. Arvid’s a big man. Molly’s a big woman but not _that_ big. “I asked uncle Michael to cure you from your Heat sickness,” he volunteers. “You dinged him up a bit but I didn’t think he’d mind since he and aunt Luci are always having a go at each other.”

“I dinged him up, huh? Which one’s Michael? Describe him,” Arvid asks curiously.

“He’s big, black hair going gray, beard, um… dimples?”

“Unusually small fangs? Bluest flare you can imagine? Wears a red scarf and has a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire as a weapon of choice?”

“I don’t know about the baseball bat, but yes. That’s uncle Michael,” Marlon confirms.

“ _Oh_ , yes! He can knot me anytime,” Arvid enthuses with amusement. “He’s a breeder. Completely mad, but aside from that?” He purrs in approval.

Marlon frowns, feeling insulted. Michael’s not mad. Arvid doesn’t know him. But maybe Arvid thinks he’s mad because he meant to let a Packrunner hang in the dungeon until he died? Okay that makes sense. Marlon still doesn’t like to hear his favourite uncle referred to as mad, but he’ll tolerate it. “He said no. He said that he couldn’t knot you because even if we put you in our best room and gave you the best food, even if you begged for it, it would be a forced knotting as long as you were a prisoner.”

“Now that’s a load of cow’s dung,” Arvid says and frowns indignantly, looking at him like he's personally offended Arvid somehow. There's even a trace of budding anger in his scent.

“He said that if there's no safe way for an Omega to say no and walk away, it's forced. That's why we don't knot our employees,” Marlon continues with confused frustration. Michael had been so sure. “I said you'd feel better and he said you would, in the body but not the head.” Arvid smells so incensed by this that Marlon turns his head away to lick his lips in submission.

Arvid is quiet for a moment then hisses between his teeth. “Okay, okay. Since you're a kit and a smart one to boot I'm going to respect you enough to take myself serious for a while.” He bounces up to sit beside Marlon and twists to face him. "Look, Peepers, your uncle isn't completely wrong. If you have leverage over someone and are even the slightest bit of unsure if the person would act differently if you didn't, then follow your uncle's advice. But nobody gets to tell me how I feel or what I want but me. _Nobody_. Only _I_! I'm very capable of separating one situation from another. That Michael refrained from knotting me is natural when he intended for me to die. But saying it's for my own good makes my blood boil. That's Conservative turd-talk. How do you feel when someone tells you you don't want something you want, or that you feel something other than you feel? That's invalidating you as a person, taking away your agency. And believe me, if I had begged your uncle to knot me and he said no, I'd feel humiliated. Meaning, not good in here.” He taps his head to demonstrate.

Marlon listens intensely. “So who of you are right?"

“Both of us. It's never black or white. It's a kaleidoscope of colours. Just never tell anyone you know better than them what they feel or want.” Arvid slips down to lean against the rock again and resumes eating.

Marlon mulls this over. It resounds inside of him. But Arvid said Michael is right too. Marlon marks down both conversations as important. He changes subject. “I feel sorry for Allan."

“Why?"

“Because he's a conscript. He didn't have a choice."

“Pfft. There's always a choice. Even if someone holds a gun to your head you still get to choose your own actions. Granted, it might get you dead,” he adds with a chuckle. "But some when they got the conscription letter promptly joined the resistance. Others took their families and went into hiding. Choice. You own your actions. That's all I'm saying.”

They remain quiet for a while after that, while Marlon unpacks this and Arvid finishes his meal. The idea sits particularly well with him. If you always have a choice you are also responsible for your own actions, which is pretty heavy. But Packrunner or not it also means that ultimately you own yourself no matter what the Main or Patriarch says. “Arvid…?”

"Mhm.”

"You must have known that you were going to die. Why weren't you afraid?”

Arvid chuckles. "Your mind sure jumps around a lot.”

"Nothing wrong with that,” Marlon argues testily.

"No. You got a quick mind.”

Marlon preens under the offhanded praise, so different than 'you think too much’. “You didn't answer my question."

Arvid huffs in amusement. “Why I'm not afraid?"

Marlon nods.

“I'm loony, Peepers. Off my rockers, simple as that,” Arvid answers and circles a finger by his temple to demonstrate. “That's obvious for anyone who's around me long enough. It's not interesting. What _is_ interesting, though, is why _you_ aren't.”

"I'm afraid.”

" _Pfft_. All I've been smelling on you is excitement and anger. That's not counting when you've been startled. No, Peepers, you don't know fear.” Arvid chuckles to himself and shakes his head before stuffing the last piece of an apple in his mouth. "So. What now?" 

“I want you to take me as close as we can safely go to watch the bombing.”

"Safe? You want to be safe you need to go to Fiji or Polynesia. You're never safe where they're bombing.”

"You going to take me, or not?”

Arvid looks at Marlon then at the glittering city on the other side of the river, then back at Marlon with a thoughtful expression. “Answer a question for me, Mar. Why is it that you, when you know of this place, haven't just gone to the city yourself? Especially after you found out where and when the next bombing was going to take place?”

"I'm not allowed to leave home without an adult. And technically, the caves are part of our home.”

Arvid laughs. "No offense, kit, but I'm sure they meant someone from your pack, not a loopy merc you broke out of the dungeon,” he sniggers.

"Rhetoric is everything,” Marlon deadpans.

Arvid's eyes go wide, then he throws back his head and guffaws heartily. He laughs until he bends forward and almost topples over. It takes a while for him to find his breath. Marlon smiles uncertainly, unsure if he's being laughed at or with.

When Arvid finally dries his laugh tears off he turns to face Marlon with a grin. “So you want to experience grief, carnage, destruction first hand and be emotionally scarred for life?” He doesn't give Marlon a chance to answer. "Well, then. What are we waiting for?"

Marlon smiles. Arvid doesn't seem loopy at all. In fact, he seems like a very reasonable man.

Despite being an adult.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who've read Meet the Family: Yes. It's the same tunnels Dean explored under the mansion. The small tunnel that Arvid and Marlon crawl through, is where Dean hid the body in Meet the Family. Since in that fic he closed that tunnel to avoid the body being found, he never found the exit Marlon and Arvid used. :)


	6. Watchers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kit Marlon and Arvid reaches the city and do what they came to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!  
> I'm behind on answering comments as usual, but I need to let you know I thoroughly enjoyed your little stories about siblings that you chose to share with me. <3
> 
> In this chapter, we meet someone we've met before but in Dick's story. :)  
> And my beta pointed out Arvid reminds her about Deadpool and now I can't unsee that personality likeness. It wasn't intentional but I don't mind it since both share the same type of madness. :)

* * *

There are people on the bridge. Marlon knows this. Going over the bridge these days is dangerous even by car and that's why they can't go to school. They see people up ahead move to block the way but Arvid starts laughing and shifts. While he walks he shifts as much as Marlon's ever seen someone shift, changing the shape of his face, but a lot more slowly than when he gobbled the apple in the dungeon. He pelts and drops fangs and holds out his hands at his sides so his claws gleam in the moonlight. And he laughs. It's a mean, delighted laugh.

Inside Marlon there's a vibrating sensation. It's not fear and it's not excitement but he can't find the right word for it.

He does what Arvid does, starts shifting his head and hands, feels his face and fangs grow longer, ‘says yes’ to the sunburn-sensation until it disappears and the breeze tickles short fur on his throat. Unlike dropping fangs and clawing, he can only do a full face shift slowly. It simply hurts too much and gives blinding headaches otherwise. Overall, the adults only do it when they're having sex, shifting just as much as they need to make a steady (but careful) bite and hold the neck of their partner. Kits and Juvies do it when they play or when they fight and they're so angry the pain is worth it to be able to grip with a bite. He's seen adults do it in a fight exactly once. It was when Josh was recruited into the pack and Antony and he settled for rank. It was the scariest rank battle Marlon's ever seen. None of that brief scuffling with pauses to reassure that the other one was alright. They seemed determined to kill each other. But nope. It ended with penis poking as usual. Josh knotted Antony and Antony looked and smelled happy about it even though he's never fully regained full functionality of his left arm.

Now, Marlon feels tense and vibrating as he copies Arvid. Looking ahead at the people that emerged from behind upturned horse carts and burned out cars. He isn't laughing. That would be too strange. He's sure Arvid knows what he's doing but he needs to draw the line somewhere.

As they draw nearer the people start smelling of anxiety and fear. One starts backing up and soon the others follow, clearing a path for them to pass through the blockade. Many hold up their palms to show they mean no harm, heads lowered with lips licked in submission.

They pass and Marlon is absolutely flabbergasted. He waits until Arvid has stopped laughing, started shifting back, and they're out of earshot. “Why did those people let us pass? There were more than ten of them and Aunt Lucifer says the human brain can only handle fighting maximum six people at once and then it's only a matter of desperately trying to defend oneself so you can run. We didn't stand a chance.”

Arvid throws a sly look over his shoulder. He stops and turns to speak with Marlon. “It's simple. What do you do with a mad dog?"

Marlon thinks, eager to give Arvid the right answer. “It depends. Is it in pain? Mostly dogs that suddenly start acting aggressive are in pain. So you take it to a doctor to fix it. Or it could be bored, if it starts acting loopy. Then you need to make sure it gets enough exercise and a job that suits it. Or, it could be afraid. In that case, you win its trust and step by step help it conquer that fear. Unless it's rabies. Can't do anything about rabies. All you can do is is muzzle it so it can't bite you and hold and comfort it while it gets the anaesthesia that will put it down. It might be rabid but it still deserves to feel loved since it was a good dog before it got sick.”

Arvid looks down at him with a small, bemused smile and confused warmth in his eyes. “Okay, this conversation didn't play out as it did in my head. I was supposed to say 'what do you do with a mad dog?’ and you were supposed to say 'you shoot it’ and I would be a smarty-pants and say 'yes, but what if you don't have guns?’ and tap my temple. You'd go ' _Ooh_ ’ and get it. But of course they didn't only teach you proper Omega care, but proper animal care too.” He chuckles and shakes his head. "Okay. An explanation? Those people are desperate, but not _that_ desperate. They saw us coming and they thought we'd be easy prey. But then we did what we did and they realized that we wouldn't submit willingly. We don't seem to have any loot worth risking your life over. They see one mad dog and one feisty kitty and think, ‘maybe I don't want to risk getting my throat torn out for an apple and half a miniature jar of honey?’ So they let us pass.”

"And what if they had guns?”

"Our chances would be worse, but the results might very well be the same. Are we really worth the risk of getting hanged in central park for if the cops catch you? When they prohibited guns they gave people amnesty to turn them in for three months. Now the amnesty is over you can get 10 years in prison for owning one. But if you fire it?” He drags a finger across his throat to demonstrate.

"I didn't know that. We have guns."

Arvid waves his hand dismissively in front of his face. “Yes but you're both rich, have soldiers in the field, and don't live in the city. Don't worry, the law doesn't apply to you. And the death penalty is scheduled to be removed in five years. The public death penalty in two years. They've had great luck in catching enemy soldiers entering the city by sniffing out people carrying guns. But that can only last for so long.” He turns and starts walking again. Marlon is quick to follow.

* * *

Arvid detours at the base of the bridge to a small strip of stony shoreline underneath it. There he strips out of his clothes and drops them by Marlon's feet. “Hang on. I just have to get all the dirt and grime off of me,” he says and turns to leap into the water. Marlon looks at his pocket watch and sits down to wait. They've got time. There aren't any people around. The breeze carries the tang of salt and seaweed, fish, and something sweet and pleasant that he can't place. He divides his attention between keeping guard and watching Arvid scrub himself with sand that he dives to the bottom to find.

Suddenly, a thought strikes Marlon. He gasps in terror, a ball of icy dread forming in his belly, mouth going dry.

Arvid is halfway out of the water, looking around for a threat wearing a serious fighting face at the first whiff of Marlon's scent souring from fear.

“Arvid! You need to get out of the water _now_! You can get sick and die! _Hurry!_ ”

It doesn't have the effect Marlon expects.

Arvid blinks in bemusement then relaxes. “Ooh. You mean the EB50 chemical in the water? Don't worry, Peepers, I'm not noseblind,” he says and sinks down into the water again.

"I'm serious, Arvid! The water is poisonous!"

“I know. But this diluted it requires long time exposure to do harm. I could bathe in it for a month without any ill effects and if it had been fresh water I could have drank it for a week.” Arvid is smiling now. “It would take three months up to a year before it started doing irrevocable damage.”

"Are you sure? Because the weapons factory―”

That's all Marlon gets out before Arvid comes shooting out of the water to crouch down in front of him and cover his mouth with a hand, eyes intense. “Weapons factory? Are you sure? I thought it made kitchen appliances?”

Marlon shakes his head and removes Arvid's hand. “No, they don't. They make weapons. They lease our land to keep their stupid, Conservative factory on. We let them because we get a steady supply of cheap guns but they use this toxic chemical to make the production cheaper then they let it out to pollute the water and it's making Primals and Packrunners by the harbour sick and dead.”

"Whoa, whoa. Calm down and breathe." Arvid starts purring soothingly in the breastbone. It's a mother's purr. Or a dad's, come to think of it. Since male Omegas can have kits too. It's calming. Arvid puts his hands on Marlon's shoulders and goes on. “Yes. The chemical you're talking about is called EB50 and was used for chemical warfare before the industry figured out it could be used another way. In higher doses, it's very dangerous. But the industry uses a diluted form and by the time they let it out, there's even less of it. When it reaches water it gets even more diluted. The problem is that the body can't break it down very well so it accumulates in the body until it reaches levels that are dangerous. The chemical has been outlawed in most of Europe after an accident in Portugal that wiped out a whole city. But like I said, in small doses it's harmless. One bath won't hurt me.”

"You do smell better now,” Marlon concedes, calmer again, only slightly anxious.

"That's the spirit. So. You know how to be afraid after all,” Arvid answers and stands up. "But for others, not yourself." 

“I told the grown-ups they need to stop it but they won't despite how it's killing Packrunners. I know they know it does, because I overheard them talking about this. It’s not like they tell me anything. The weapons fact―”

Arvid covers Marlon’s mouth with his hand again, eyes darting around for unseen or unsmelled listeners. “Don’t say it. Don’t mention it where it could be overheard. You shouldn’t even have told me. I promised I’d tell you everything I know that I think will be useful for your side to know, but I didn’t promise I wouldn’t tell the Demon what’s useful to us. That information you’re sitting on is worth a lot of money to a lot of people, Peepers. Heck, most of the people here don’t even know what that sweet smell in the water is or that it’s making them sick. Any of this gets out and you’ll have every god of chaos coming here to frolic and it _won’t_ be to your advantage.” He removes his hand from Marlon's mouth so he can speak.

Marlon presses his lips together, slightly ashamed. He'd thought it was general knowledge amongst adults. This is the problem when people don't tell you stuff and you have to 'accidentally overhear’ meetings through the vent. “How come they don't know what's hurting them?”

“EB50 smells good, doesn't it? Fish are immune. It builds up in their bodies too but doesn't hurt them. For someone who interacts directly with the contaminated water, bathes in it, drinks it, it takes from 3 months up to a year before they start smelling sick, long before you feel it. For someone getting it second hand, like eating the fish or inhaling water vapors by being near the docks it takes even longer than that. You generally don't backtrack looking for obscure changes a year ago when you get sick.”

"Yes, but wouldn't the newspaper write about it? Can't the doctors test for it?”

One corner of Arvid's lips pull up and there's a mix of amusement and sadness. “Going to a real doctor is expensive. It could indebt you for life if you are poor. There are other healers but they don't have the equipment and education necessary to find out. And few people can read here in this part of America. Those who can are hardly dockworkers.”

"But school? They can't _all_ be that slow in the head?" 

Arvid chuckles. “Nobody told you school costs money, and lots of it?"

“It does?" Marlon frowns in annoyance. This is news to him. It shouldn't be. They should have told him. He knows they're rich. He knows that there are poor people. He just hadn't imagined that would affect the ability to read and write. He and his friends had been musing about what it was like for the kits in poor people’s schools. The worst they could come up with was that they’d have to use hand-me-down books or be responsible for cleaning, maybe getting beans every day for lunch or something like that. The grown-ups must know about the reality of this and they should have told him.

“Mhm. Now let me get dressed and we'll get going."

“Oh, oh! I almost forgot. I brought you clothes. They're Michael's so I think they'll fit,” Marlon says and holds up the bag to Arvid.

Arvid chuckles. “You're a perfect gentleman, Marlon. Thanks." 

While Arvid uses his uniform to dry off and then get dressed in the new clothes he mutters to himself. “Don’t get in trouble over me, I say. What does he do? ‘Get in trouble over you, you say? Challenge accepted!’” He side-eyes Marlon with a private smirk and a look in his eyes that seems almost impressed. Marlon’s chest glows with pride for it.

* * *

The city has changed. He’s rarely been in these parts―only on market days when they went with the whole pack―but so much has changed and it’s not because of the darkness. There are people sleeping in doorways and alleys, people with dirty and patched clothes who smell of fatigue and starvation or sickness. Buildings have started to fall into disrepair. The air is heavy with the scent of old smoke from things that aren't meant to burn. Other smells, smells you don’t get in the area around his school―feces, vomit, urine―play a mute backdrop alongside decay and trash, oil, horse manure, and exhaust fumes. He can smell gulls, rats, cockroaches and other vermin. And so many people. Most tracks are fading since not many are up and about at this hour. It's always overwhelming to come to the city. It's like being bombarded with scents. Those in the pack who have the best sense of smell, like aunt Luci, spend their first hours sneezing before they adjust. But to Marlon it's exciting because of the many scents, overwhelming or not.

“EB50..." he says to make conversation when they've been walking in silence for a while, “it accumulates in fish?"

“Yup."

“Fish move around. How about rain? Does it follow water vapors up to the clouds? Because I know how rain works and then we're not only endangering people living here but anywhere the wind blows. Like our own land. And since fish move around it means that even if we buy fish caught away from the coast we might still end up eating poisonous fish.”

Arvid throws an impressed look over his shoulder. "Darn, you're sharp, Peepers. Correct on all accounts.”

"If it travels by rain, wouldn't it accumulate in fruit and vegetables too?”

"I suppose? It hasn't been around for long enough to know how long it will take for plants to absorb enough for them to be poisonous to humans. We _do_ break down and rid ourselves of the chemical, just very slowly. As long as the intake is slower than the time it takes to rid ourselves of it we're good.”

The whole thing stresses Marlon out. They eat fish often enough. "So… Since fish move around there's no telling if they came from an area where another factory lets out EB50 in the water,” he states. "It means there's no way to guarantee that―” A thought strikes him. "Are small kits in greater risk of getting sick?"

“Yes. The bigger you are the longer it'll take. So don't eat fish." Arvid throws an amused look at Marlon and keeps walking, leaving Marlon to his own musings. 30 seconds later Arvid stops dead and turns around to face Marlon. “Hold on. Your scent went from distressed to eerily content. Coming from you that's alarming considering the topic. Care to share why?”

Instantly guilty at being caught Marlon looks down grumpily and licks his lips in submission. “No," he answers glumly. But he still confesses. “It's my sister. She's always going into my room, stealing my stuff. And she's not really my sister. We're not related but if I say that the adults get upset at me. My _real_ siblings are okay, but Clara is awful. They say there's something wrong with me because blood relation is important to me when it shouldn't be. But it matters to me. And I don't like when people go into my room and take my stuff. It's _mine_.”

"How big is your pack?”

"What's that got to do with anything?”

"Possibly everything. Is it a small pack? No. You're at least ten. Are you bigger than 15?”

Marlon nods.

"Closer to 30? 50? 100?"

“Around 50."

Arvid looks thoughtful. “And I already know you field soldiers and are rich enough to live in a house with a giant cellar in the North Hampton,” he says to himself and scratches his beard.

“Almost everyone in my family are fighters," Marlon says with pride. "Except granddad because someone has to handle the business side of things.”

"So your family are soldiers, huh. Mom? Dad? They're away fighting?” Arvid asks. Marlon nods. "Any close relatives that aren't away fighting most of the time?”

"My bigger siblings. But they're Juvies and we're not allowed to help in the war until after college,” Marlon tells him glumly.

Arvid nods like something makes perfect sense. “Your blood relatives, they were your primary caregivers when you were little? Before they had to go fight in the war?”

"Yes.”

"And correct me if I'm wrong, but they're all high ranking?”

"My grandparents are the Main and Patriarch,” Marlon agrees.

"In that case, there's nothing wrong with you. A pack is built like a tree trunk, adding rings surrounding a core. The bigger the pack the more rings. Up to 10 or 15 members there are no rings as such but once the pack gets bigger rings are formed. The pack gets factions that are closer with each other than others. In your case it's familial. Doesn't have to be, but it is. So all the sudden most of the pack is away, leaving a slice like a slice of cake with the most members left of the outer ring and by coincidence only underage members of the inner core that happens to be your faction. All your primary caregivers are gone, leaving you with adults who aren’t close to you. You following?”

Marlon nods. "So there's nothing wrong with me for wishing Clara would just disappear?”

"Nnn..,” Arvid makes a so-so gesture. "It's normal not to get along with everyone in a big pack. A pack can have members that loathe each other and still function beautifully with everyone happy. My birth pack was like that. But if you're at a level where you consider letting your pack get slowly poisoned just because you hope to be rid of one member, then the adults left in charge are failing at their job. They're responsible for keeping the peace and teaching you how to get along. I know there’s nothing wrong with your empathy. And now you’ve piqued my curiosity. What do these adults do to make a smart, empathic guy like yourself fantasise about murder?” he asks and turns to start walking again, prompting Marlon to follow.

“I don’t know,” Marlon grumps. “They’re always defending her,” he whines. “I always get the blame. Like the other night. She was in my room playing with my favourite toy. I told her to give it to me and take a powder. She refused so I growled a warning and when she still refused I hurt her. Then she started crying because she was bleeding so uncle Dave came with someone else and told me to let her have it because I have so many toys. When I said no he tried to take it from me. But she has a lot of toys too and when I pointed that out he said that in a pack you share but it's _my_ toy! It was a gift to me with my name on it and everything!”

"Breathe, Peepers. Nobody is taking anything from you now. You attacked Clara despite her submitting?” Arvid asks throwing a look over his shoulder at Marlon.

Marlon scoffs at the insult. "No. Of course not. I’m not a _monster_. She never submits."

“Then you should have kicked her butt. Submission is so important for survival even most Progs know the body language necessary. Why do you think I ended up in that dungeon with Diego and Allan? All three of us submitted. Granted, it didn’t do them much good in the end but it _could_ have. You kick that kitty girl’s butt until she gets it. You’re doing her a favour.”

“I wish uncle Dave would see it that way. Every time she starts crying he comes to her defense no matter what I say. He always believes her story. Last night I was so angry about it I challenged him for rank,” Marlon confesses.

Arvid snickers. “Got your butt thoroughly kicked, huh?”

“No. He backed out of the room and told me I couldn’t come out or have an evening snack until I’d learned to play nicely.”

"He _forfeited?!_ ” Arvid exclaims then bursts out laughing. He laughs loud and long enough while they keep walking that he wakes up people sleeping in doorways. Golden eyes opening to stare from corners like disembodied embers in the dark. Marlon flares, teeths and shows his pointy teeth threateningly to everyone they pass lest they think they can get Arvid while he goes around laughing all distracted. “I'll be damned. He forfeited to a kit," Arvid giggles to himself when he starts to calm down.

"But he didn't really,” Marlon argues. “It doesn't count since I'm a kit."

“Who told you that? Of course it counts! When a kit challenges you for rank you have to meet it as you would an adult. You know why?”

"So we learn?” Marlon hedges.

"Bingo, Peepers. You were ready to fight him, weren't you? You would have submitted to a whopping?”

"Yes, and yes. But we kits don't do rank fights like adults.” Kits don't. They fight, sure, but any semblance of rank is fluent and conceptual and mostly based on age. Juvies can do actual rank challenges but that is usually when they get close to presenting. 

“I know that. But that's why it's so important to meet a challenge when it comes from a kit. A real rank challenge can be a deadly affair if both fighters refuse to yield. So if a kit challenges you, even if you never ever lay hands on that kitty otherwise, you give them a real smackdown so they know what consequences a challenge has.”

"So… you're saying… I outrank uncle Dave now?" Marlon asks, scrunching up his nose skeptically.

Arvid starts giggling again, nodding. “That's what I'm saying. Unless your pack are secretly Progs. Hey, would you still fight this Dave fellow for rank now that you're not pissed off?”

Marlon answers solemnly with all dignity he can muster. “Yes."

Arvid has another giggle fit. He sure laughs a lot for someone who's been hanging in a dungeon for days. Marlon thinks it's strange but he also likes it. “In that case, the next time he tries bossing you around, growl like this,” Arvid says. Between one heartbeat and another, his gleeful demeanor changes and he growls the way Aiden has started doing when Marlon annoys him too much. The same way dad does to Michael and Luci when they hassle him. Marlon had figured it's just another, more scary way to say 'take a powder’, but now when he thinks about it, it might very well be a warning from someone of higher rank.

“Does that invoke rank?" he wants clarified. He wishes primal language came as natural to him as spoken words.

Arvid turns back to his jovial self. "Sure does," he grins. “And unless he meets it with a challenge it's no bars held from your side. _Jiminy_ , I sure wish I could get to know how it pans out. Now you do it,” he enthuses, "just so I know you'll get it right.”

Marlon mimics Arvid's earlier posture and growl. It's easy to do primal communication, just not to know what it all means.

“Perfect! Brilliant! Lovely!" Arvid bounces in glee before he starts walking again. Giggling.

* * *

They've passed by small pack territories. Here in the city, a pack marks the entrance to the building they live or the street in front of their building, nothing more. If there are many small packs living close by each other they might only mark the door to their apartment or the stairwell. But now they're in a big pack's territory. They started smelling the markings some way back and they're getting more frequent. Marlon doesn't know the name of the packs they have deals with, in the city. He wonders if this is one of those.

There are no homeless people sleeping in doorways here and the few people they see move either in a submissive scurry or like Arvid, confident that this is the safest place on Earth.

“Do you smell our watchers?" Arvid suddenly asks quietly.

"What watchers?”

"That's a no then. I can never tell with people who have a lesser sense of smell than I. We're being watched from above. Do exactly what I do,” Arvid instructs. Then he smiles broadly, tips his head back to look towards the rooftop of the house to their left and raises his hand in a friendly salute.

Marlon can't see anything but black chimneys against the dark sky but does as instructed.

One of the chimneys move, then another further away; They stand up―people―and wave back. 

“Wow. Why can't I smell them?"

“No downward wind here. When we get to the intersection you should be able to catch a whiff unless your nose is stunted. These are predators, like your pack, I suppose. But you hunt different prey. Your pack hunts other businesses. These guys prey on the weak and foolish. Technically, we could get mugged crossing their territory. Coming from above gives them a great element of surprise.”

"Not if we know they're there.”

"Exactly. And now they know we know. Plus they think we expect to pass unmolested so they won't touch us.”

Marlon scoffs. "I'd say anyone expects to be unmolested or the element of surprise would be the element of the expected.”

Arvid sniggers. "Not what I meant. I've picked up at least 30 individual markings but I've only smelt five sentries. We greeted them like we are friends. They're too many in the pack to keep track of everyone's friends so they err on the side of caution.”

Marlon mulls this over as they leave the watchers behind. "We're not even in their heart territory and we're moving closer to where the bombs are expected…”

“Mhm?"

“Next watcher you spot. Point them out to me." 

"As you wish.”

They walk two more blocks before Arvid discreetly makes him aware of someone on the roof to their right. Marlon stops and looks up at the spot indicated. He flares and puts two fingers in his mouth to whistle shrilly.

Yet again a 'chimney’ stands up and flares a bright blue.

“Hey! Can you come down here? I need to talk to you! It's urgent! Pack business!” Marlon yells.

The blue-eyed watcher remains still for a beat as if he's thinking it over. Then he quickly scuttles to the edge of the roof, crouches down to grab the edge and swing himself over. He hangs there a second before he swings his legs to the drainpipe, pulls himself onto it and glides down. About seven feet off the ground he uses his legs to push himself off the wall to land smoothly in front of Marlon.

The guy's a Juvie. Lean, agile, black hair, marked cheekbones, sharp eyes and a small, intrigued smirk. And he smells sick. He's sick and dying and healthy as a horse at the same time. It's confusing. He doesn't smell any kind of sickness Marlon ever smelt before. It hits him then. 'Long time exposure’. He withholds a gasp. He's sick because of Marlon's pack's greed.

“Pack business, huh?"

“Yes."

The Juvie scrutinizes him for a beat before nodding to himself, then he puffs himself up and steps in close, locking gaze with Marlon. He smiles to show he's teething his canines. Marlon has seen the grown-ups do this too and follows suit. It's a short moment of sizing each other up where you can't back down if you want to be seen as an equal. They don't stand like that for long before the Juvie's smile turns less pointed and he steps away to offer his neck for scenting. Marlon goes to his toes to reach to smell him then offers his own neck. Once again they step away to offer each other some personal space.

“I'm Laurent Hale of the Hale core in New York," the Juvie says.

"Marlon Williams of the Long Island Williams core."

“Pleased to meet you, Marlon. What can I do for you?” Laurent asks looking faintly amused.

"No. It's the other way around. We got intel tonight saying there's a bombing planned at 3 AM. The supposed target is the shipyard. If you have people nearby you need to evacuate them as soon as possible.”

Laurent turns serious with a note of distress in his scent. “How reliable is the source?"

“The source is rock solid but the information is several days old so plans might have changed. Still, you needed to be warned.”

Laurent nods. "Thanks. I'll alert my pack.”

Laurent holds out his hand for a brief handshake then turns and shimmies up the drainpipe like a monkey. As soon as he's on the roof he does a pack distress call. Further away they see someone jumping from another roof to get to Laurent's roof and not long after that another call goes out spreading from roof to roof. It's some kind of warning sound with information baked into it that Marlon can't discern. He turns to Arvid just to find him staring wide-eyed.

“You're a _Williams?!_ Like in Jedikiah Williams?" Arvid hisses almost through his teeth.

"Yes. That’s grandpa. You didn't know?”

" _No_. Do you know how much money you're worth? I could take you hostage and get a fortune in ransom!”

Marlon chuckles. "No, you couldn't because you promised not to hurt anyone in my family. In case this is news to you, I'm still included in my family. Now come on.”

Arvid curses under his breath as Marlon grabs him by the sleeve to lead him onward.

* * *

The intel proves to be legit. They climb up on a roof after Arvid grabs a harried woman who smells like a Hale, tells her they're the messengers from the Williams pack who brought the warning and asks which building is the most stable around here and how to get up on it. She points out a house and which drainpipes are reinforced to climb before she hurries away. It answers another question Marlon had been mulling over. Drainpipes aren’t usually made to hold a climber.

“Are you sure this is safe?" Marlon asks when they dangle their legs over the edge and sit facing the bay with the shipyard on the other side of the water.

Arvid chuckles. “It's definitely not safe, Peepers. Too late to turn back now though,” he answers and takes up the last apple from Marlon's bag just as the sirens start blaring all over the city.

Marlon isn't sure what he was expecting. He's sure he hadn't imagined what happens. Afterwards, he won’t be able to recall much except for dreaming about it in crystal clarity. The black, almost invisible airplanes against the blue velvet of the night sky lined up with his expectations. But then the bombs fall and Marlon's perception gets fuzzy, detached as if he’s not really there. At first, the blasts aren't that big. Then the whole world seems to erupt in flames by the shipyard. The water is burning, the sky is aflame with thick, dark, billowing smoke blotting out the moon, what looks like giant fireworks fly out of the inferno to explode into buildings in all directions. One of those come flying over the water to explode into and collapse half the building next to them, shaking the earth.

“Should we run?" He asks with a hollow voice as he leans back to avoid some flying debris.

“No use. That's USS Victoria's missiles going off at random. Depending on their angle they can fly kilometers, miles, further on,” Arvid dismisses chipmunking a big piece of apple. He hands the half-eaten apple to Marlon and digs into the bag for the remaining honey instead.

Marlon numbly takes a big bite of the apple, numbly turns his head to stare at the remains of the building beside theirs, numbly zooms in on the half of a woman hanging limply over the edge of the top floor. Half her skull is missing along with an arm and a leg. One of her breasts is bare. On the ground bloody, dusty people are crawling out of the debris or try to dig others out. A few flames dance here and there only to die out. On the floor below the dead woman, the room is mostly intact except missing a wall and a family are sitting up in bed staring in shock at their new view.

Arvid nudges him in the side. “Oh! Oh! The wave! Don't miss the wave!" He enthuses without looking away from the harbour.

Marlon turns his head to see a giant wave come crashing over the docks, smashing carts and boats, sweeping things into the water as it retracts, leaving half the street glistening wet reflecting the raging fires on the other side of the bay. There are probably sounds to all of this but his brain is playing white noise that only allows Arvid's voice to properly register and even that is distant.

On the other side of the bay, the fire from the shipyard has spread to the houses surrounding the pyre. They're burning like they've been drenched in oil.

Apparently, he said that out loud because Arvid answers. “Yes. That's what happens when you cut corners with building materials. It's cheaper but in case of a fire, it turns into a death trap. I doubt it'll go past that line over there, you see? By that large parking lot. Unless the wind picks up and changes direction. Poor bastards living near the pyre. Not only do they have to live with the constant smell of smoke, now they'll have to burn to a crisp too,” Arvid says jokingly and sucks honey off his finger with a gleam in his eyes as if he's watching a really good theater show.

The area around the shipyard close to the pyre has always been an area where poor people live due to the noise and smell. Marlon has only been at the pyre once. They burn their own dead at home on their own property. It doesn't seem fair that poor people should fare worse in a crisis. But he remembers sitting on grandpa Jed's lap, Jed saying 'Life isn't fair. We are privileged. But also remember not to judge people by their current state of fortune. Anyone cunning and determined enough can climb up in the world. And we can also fall from grace if we're not cunning, determined and ruthless. Nothing in life is given.’ It was after the first time Marlon had seen a homeless person.

“Do you have salt on you?" Marlon asks, suddenly concerned about Arvid burning.

Arvid chuckles. "Aww. Aren't you lovely? There you go again, worrying about me. No, I don't. Your uncle kindly took it from me.”

Marlon digs into his pocket and comes up with a small paper packet of salt that he offers Arvid. “Here. You need it more than me."

“You sure? If we die in a fire that will guarantee you a straight passage to your loved ones.”

"All my loved ones are still alive. Logically, if I die first they'll come to me wherever I am,” Marlon points out.

Arvid bursts into laughter. "Good point, Peepers. Can't argue with that." He takes the salt and pockets it with a 'Thanks,’ and a lopsided smirk.

They stay watching forever and just a few seconds. Marlon feels distant as if he's sitting in a bubble. The ground shakes when another part of the building next to them collapses. The bedroom with the missing wall remains intact. A kit much younger than Marlon goes to the edge and looks up to lock gaze with Marlon. Marlon eats his apple half staring back at the wide-eyed kit until an adult comes and rips the kit from the edge. 

A terrified horse comes galloping on the street below. The fires light up the sky, chasing away darkness and making shadows dance between the houses. Marlon's mind wanders with thoughts of what will happen to the people who survive and have lost their housing. Or the wounded who can't afford to see a doctor. And if his family somehow could have stopped the bombing if they had listened to him. Maybe not? They would only have a day or two to get it done. But Marlon thinks they could have done something. Warned people to evacuate and get the military to move USS Victoria to open sea. If she hadn't been in port here, her demise wouldn’t have hurt so many innocent people. It should be forbidden to keep military ships in ports of crowded cities. They’re paying politicians, aren’t they? So this is their fault. Somehow. It’s all terrible and horrifying and strangely beautiful in the worst of ways. 

Marlon is glad he made the decision to come to see this horror show. Not because it’s making him happy. On the contrary. But he feels like he’s fulfilling some obligation. As if it’s his duty to witness the senseless destruction since his pack could have stopped it somehow.

Distantly to his hearing, but closeby, a primal cry of grief starts up, followed by another. One by one Primals and Packrunners howl their sorrow as they find new lost loved ones.

Marlon stands up, tilts his head back and adds his own voice to the chorus.

* * *


	7. Red Haze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kit Marlon experiences a few other traumatic events right after having watched the bombing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Infant dying, body horror, gore. Sensitive readers beware.
> 
> About their religions; When I use deities existing in our world I'm playing fast and loose with our mythology.

* * *

Arvid talks. He tells Marlon about troop locations, troop sizes, significant political happenings, names of people taking bribes of people with other names to remember, hidden air bases, coded statements that Arvid isn’t sure what they mean but thinks might be of use to the right person. Marlon isn’t sure how all of it will be useful either but he tries to memorize it all. Arvid had called himself a mad dog. He isn’t. A mad dog wouldn’t have chosen this particular moment to impart the knowledge asked for, but a sly dog would. Numbed out and detached, faced with the single most traumatic experience of his life; Arvid isn’t expecting him to remember any of it. He’s wrong because Marlon’s emotionlessly registering it all like one of those new computer machines he’s read about. One thing is for sure; Arvid is no ordinary grunt.

“...I think that might be all. Got it, Peepers?” Arvid finishes with a self-satisfied smirk.

Marlon nods then follows when Arvid says it’s time to get off the roof. Arvid has started looking mightily affected by his Heat sickness again, covered in a sheen of sweat, smelling of fatigue and slick, panting his breaths. Marlon's a better climber than Arvid. He's practised when he wanted not to be found at home. But climbing a drainpipe is different than climbing trees or from a window to the roof. He doesn't dare to try sliding the way Laurent had done.

The street is covered by the rubble of the half-demolished house. As soon as he touches down he catches wind of strong fear, pain, and blood. He sets off in that direction like a homing bird, climbing onto the wreckage of debris, mortar, dust, broken beams and furniture that once was a house. Arvid grabs a hold of his arm to stop him. “I know it's dangerous and unstable to climb on this. I'll be careful," Marlon says before Arvid has a chance to try stopping him.

“I have no doubt you will be. But the direction you’re heading? It’s no good. There’s nothing you can do about it and it will play fiddle fool with your mind. Leave it be,” Arvid urges, then adds the magic words to tick Marlon off; “I’m telling you not to go there for your own good.”

Marlon jerks himself free with a deep frown. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it,” he snarls and turns to continue. Grown-ups are always telling him he can’t do things ‘for his own good’. _He_ can decide what’s for his own good or not, thank you very much.

Arvid grabs his arm again but this time Marlon flares, teeths his canines and makes as if to nip at Arvid’s hand while growling in fierce warning. Arvid lets go, averts his gaze and licks his lips, any further attempts to stop Marlon aborted.

Marlon makes his way up rubble until he finds the source of the scents. At first, he stands there looking down at it uncomprehending. It’s like his mind refuses to understand what it’s seeing, sliding off an invisible barrier any time he tries. He looks up to see where it came from as if that somehow would help make sense of it all. He finds himself looking up at the dead woman with half her body missing, her one bare breast hanging out. He blinks up at her for a few seconds before he finally breaches the barrier inside and understands. “ _Athena!_ ” He breathes with a sense of distant horror and crouches down to look at the thing he one moment ago hadn’t recognised for what it was. A kitling. So small, maybe just a few months old. Still miraculously alive somehow. Probably just about to feed when whatever tore the woman asunder tore its face off as well. Its face is missing. Gone. Eyesockets empty except for a bloody mess, nose and cheekbones, most of the mouth and jaws - _all gone_. In their place the most gruesome biology lesson ever to exist, hollows covered in blood and meaty sludge, a gurgling noise that bubbles the blood with every breath it― _she_ ―takes. The rest of the skull, her ears are still intact, her body only has superficial scrapes and cuts. 

Marlon has pins and needles in his arms and legs. Her fear and pain make him want to cry. How can anyone be alive with no face?

He doesn’t think. He pulls up his shirt to hitch it behind his neck, baring his chest to the chilly night air, then starts purring a soothing everything’s-going-to-be-alright as he gently picks her up and holds her to his chest so she can feel the warmth of his skin, hear his heartbeat and feel the vibrations from his breastbone purr. He settles in a more comfortable position cradling her, rocking softly, and puts his lips on her forehead just above the edge of the gaping nothing of her face. It’s a soft press of lips, a prolonged kiss to serve as another physical conduit for his purr. He caresses her shoulder and belly with the hand not supporting her. Her hand closest to his body moves, fumbles, finds his hand, grips his finger in a steady grip and pulls it up towards where her mouth used to be, then just holds it there in the hollow. Marlon’s numbness is traded for a familiar calm. How many times hadn’t he held Clara like this while she mouthed his finger in self-comfort during her sickness? Many, many times. Before she turned into a little monster tormenting him she was such a sweet little kitling, hanging between life and death fighting lung disease for months. Everything about this is familiar. The gurgling breath, the fear, even to some extent the pain. But the fear is fading and the pain has lessened. Instead, he can smell sadness from the kitling in his arms so he adds an affectionate note to his purr until only calm and pain remains.

He’s not sure how long he sits like this. Time is a concept he lost his grip of when the bombs fell. Eventually, the gurgling stops and the grip on his finger loosens. He can smell that she’s no longer alive. Then Arvid is there and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You want your salt back?” he asks somberly.

“What for?” Marlon asks and looks around for something to wrap the kitling in. He finds a dusty blanket that probably had been hers to begin with, quickly wraps her in it, puts her down and stands up to look at Arvid. Arvid looks completely taken aback.

“Um. No. No reason. Why would you possibly want it back now?” he says as if he’s talking to himself, shaking his head looking confused. “Lovely. Really lovely,” he mutters. Then, to Marlon, “You ready to scram?”

Marlon pulls his shirt back on properly, hiding an eyeroll. “I lied to her and said everything’s going to be alright. I held her hand to the edge. Let her gods take over now. Your soul is a darn bit more important than hers. It’s not like I can take her to the pyre and I’m not going to stand here and light a kitling on fire without proper preparations. What would Athena say about it?”

Arvid relaxes. “I thought you didn’t get why I asked. Foolish of me,” he chuckles. “But you’re no son of Athena, Peepers. It might be your pack’s god, but it isn’t yours. You’re a son of Ares if I ever saw one.” He turns and starts walking, climbing down from the rubble, ignoring other people moving around.

Marlon frown and follows. Athena is a goddess of intelligence and war strategy. Ares is also a god of war. But he stands for chaos and destruction. Granted, also for the savage valour needed to succeed in battle, but still. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m smart,” he argues. He is. He _is_.

Arvid chuckles. “You’re sharp as a whip, Peepers. I’d never claim the opposite. No, it means you’re unpredictable. You upset the order of things and go against the stream. It’s lovely. I―”

“Captain!” They haven’t walked for long before a call interrupts Arvid’s explanation. They both stop to look and see a short, dark-skinned man come jogging down the street towards them. Marlon scents the air to find he’s an Alpha.

Arvid grins. “Hammer! Fancy meeting you out for a stroll this lovely morning,” he says when the man stops in front of them.

“You’re alive.” The man’s teeth are stark white in contrast to his dark skin when he smiles.

“Surprised? Disappointed perhaps? How much is the pool up to now anyway?” Arvid smirks.

“No, Sir,” Hammer chuckles. “5000, Sir. We couldn’t find your body amongst the dead so the Commander ordered you found but we lost the trail by the water and now the company is spread out. The Urchins are combing the city.”

“I was captured and moved by boat. You have the means to call it in?”

“Yes, Sir.” Hammer removes the backpack he’s wearing and digs up a strange device. It’s about as long and broad as a forearm, has buttons and a nub poking out on the top. Hammer pulls at the nub that turns out to be an antenna. He hands the device over to Arvid. 

Arvid pushes some buttons on it, holds the device to his cheek and holds in another button on the side. The device beeps. “This is Captain Mattsson requesting to speak with the Commander. Over,” he says and lets go of the side-button. The device beeps when he lets the button go. 

A short moment later it beeps again. It’s followed by a voice coming scratchily from the device. “ _This is the Commander speaking. Report. Over_.”

Arvid repeats the process. “Mission completed, Sir. I was captured but set free. I’m currently in New York. Over.”

“ _You live. Is good. Retribution? Over._ ”

Hammer waits silently and Marlon stares at the device with awe, mouthing a silent ‘Wow.’

“No, Sir. I was treated very well, Sir,” Arvid answers and puts his hand on Marlon’s shoulder to give it a little squeeze. “I’m in Heat, though. Requesting a short leave to ride it out. Over.”

“ _Request granted. Reconvene 0700 in ten days by point 3-5-7 Nox. Repeat. Over._ ”

“Reconvene 0700 in ten days by point 3-5-7 Nox. Got it, Sir. Over.”

“ _Ending conversation. Over_.”

As soon as the Commander stops talking Marlon tugs at Arvid’s arm. “What _is_ that?”

“It’s a Handie-Talkie. They’re expensive as heck but if you want one, Motorola makes them,” Arvid says and hands it over to Marlon making grabby hands.

Hammer moves as to stop him but halts when Arvid lifts an eyebrow at him. Marlon inspects the heavy piece before handing it to Hammer with a look at Arvid first in confirmation. The device beeps once more. A new voice comes out of it. “ _This is Archer speaking. The pool is still active. All units are called back to base. Over_.”

Hammer pushes the button to confirm he’d gotten the order, then puts it back into his backpack. He stands up again and looks at Arvid. “So what’s with the kit? Are we keeping him?”

“The _kit_ has a name, you know?” Marlon snipes in annoyance at being talked about over his head.

Hammer looks at him. “Well, what is it?” he says in the same stingy tone of voice.

Arvid chuckles and puts an arm around Marlon’s shoulder, pulling him towards himself answering before Marlon can. “Ares. His name is Ares. And if he wants to join us is up to him. He’s not one to be ‘kept’. We’ve been hanging out today.”

Marlon is about to correct Arvid about his name until he remembers Arvid talking about how much he’d we worth to ransom. Hammer hasn’t given any promise not to hurt him or his pack, after all.

“Hanging out?” Hammer smirks in amusement looking down at Marlon. “You must be either an incredibly brave or stupid kit.”

“And you must be a particularly dimwitted merc,” Marlon retorts angrily. “Why would you draw that ridiculous conclusion?”

Arvid and Hammer snigger and share a look before Hammer answers. “Because to this day I’ve never seen the Captain kit-sit for more than an hour before the kit was crying for their mommy trying to hide from him.”

“Why?” Marlon asks, too perplexed to remember to be angry.

“ _Why_? Did you just meet him, or…?” Hammer asks as if he finds the question both astounding and delightful.

“No?” Marlon answers, scrunching up his face in confusion.

Hammer looks to Arvid for answers. Arvid smirks. “He’s sharp as a whip. He led me through the safest way to traverse Long Island. _Underground_. Big chunks of the cave roof fell down and he shrugged it off unbothered with a ‘It happens sometimes’. I told him what happens when you die underground and the little jerk answers with a ‘Don’t die then’,” Arvid says with a grin. Hammer laughs and looks at Marlon with a new gleam in his eyes, impressed. Arvid goes on. “He wanted to see the bombs fall so I took him to that building,” he turns around and points to their former vantage point, “and watched the mayhem unfold from that roof.”

“And the only one who did any crying was Arvid,” Marlon feels compelled to say. “It was one iny tiny spider. _Tiny_.”

Arvid mock-scoffs. “We were crawling through a tunnel so narrow I almost got stuck several times, it was _huge_ and it was crawling _on my face_.”

Marlon rolls his eyes and Hammer laughs.

Marlon realises something. “Oh! You two know each other and you have a knot,” he says to Hammer and gestures between the two men. “You can stick it in him and cure his Heat-sickness. Bada-bing, bada-boom.”

Arvid screws his eyes shut and grins, shoulders jumping in silent laughter. Hammer looks horrified and takes a step back holding up his hands, palm out.

“He’s been like this all the time, trying to solve my problems,” Arvid tells Hammer before directing himself to Marlon. “Hammer and I are not compatible in that way, but thank you nonetheless. However, I fancy myself worth a bit more courting unless I happen to be strung up in a dungeon, so maybe next time wait for the Alphas to show their hand first? I’d like to be able to tell them to take a powder if they don’t measure up. Choices, remember? Not everyone knows how to properly treat an O like you do.”

Properly chastised and a bit proud of himself Marlon nods. It’s frustrating not to be able to fix the problem at hand but he does get it. He just figured since the two already knew each other it would do the trick. The adults in the pack didn’t always bother courting each other when they were in the mood.

The two men talk only for a few more minutes before Hammer has to find the other men in his unit and head back. Arvid is forthcoming answering Marlon’s questions while they walk seemingly aimlessly, putting distance between themselves and the part of the city that is burning. Hammer belongs to a unit called the Urchins. They’re called that because they are people who grew up on the street. Anytime they need to gather intel or find someone in a city they send the Urchins in. Everyone fighting for the Demon is someone they’ve picked up along the way, people who have had their lives destroyed by the war and were left floundering, but with too much fire left in their soul to die. Everyone in the company is Primal, but not necessarily a Packrunner. 

But Arvid is wilting. Marlon can smell it. Whatever he’s looking for, he isn’t finding it. “Shouldn’t you be in bed, resting?” Marlon says.

“Shouldn’t you?”

“Point taken. I should head home soon.”

They walk in silence for a while. The city is awake now and everything smells of the fire on the other side of the bay. The sun is probably on its way up but the black, billowing smoke keeps any light except streetlight from reaching the streets. Twice they’re passed by firefighters, once by a ladder truck and once by a horsedrawn pump carriage. Horses have become the most common vehicle since the war drove up the prices of fuel. Only rich people can still afford to use their cars. 

Arvid breaks the silence. “You didn’t think your plan through, now did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I follow you back home I’ll be strung up again or worse, and I fulfilled my part of the deal so I’m not doing that. I can’t go to where we emerged from the caves either because they must surely have found it now and left a sentry. You’ll have to go home alone.”

Marlon stops with a sinking feeling, realising they’ll have to part and he might never see Arvid again. “That’s okay. I can take care of myself. I guess this is goodbye then.”

Arvid stops and turns to face him. He looks down at Marlon, silent for a beat. “...Unless you want to run away from home and become a merc?” Arvid suggests. He almost sounds hopeful.

It’s tempting. It shouldn’t be, but it is. He shakes his head. “My big brother would worry himself to pieces.”

Arvid looks like he wants to say something about that, but halts. Instead, he asks, “Do you want your bag back?” He's been carrying it since he stuffed his uniform in it after the bath.

Marlon shakes his head. “No. Keep it. Go get your knot," he says, darts in to give Arvid an affectionate temple rub, then turns to quickly walk away, ripping the band-aid of goodbye. He doesn't look back.

* * *

Arvid had been much more grounding to be around than Marlon had realized. Walking along, the night's experiences catch up to him in waves before his mind manages to reject them over and over. He circles through numbness, nausea, horror, anger, pins and needles, back to confused numbness again. Every time the numbness washes over him he gets disoriented and has trouble remembering where he is and why. Every time he manages to get his thoughts coherent again his mind hits him with a motion picture reel of select bits of tonight's horror show. It threatens to turn his stomach and makes him freeze and sweat. Then the anger boils up, hot and noxious, because they could have done something to limit the damages. Realizing that, he gets pins and needles in his limbs, then the detached numbness washes over him. Again and again.

There are people out. Standing in doorways or huddled in worried groups looking at the dark, smoky sky. There are no paper Juvies peddling newspapers here in this part of the city but tiding kits run past him frequently. They stop by people and hold out their hand to receive a coin or food then share all the information they have, accurate or not.

The smell of smoke and fire is so thick that Marlon barely can smell anything else in his distracted state. He should have paid more attention to the people around him.

He's walking in an alley on the edge of the Hale territory when he suddenly finds his way blocked by an Alpha man. “What's wrong, little kitty? Lost your parents? I'll help you. I've got food and a safe bed for you to sleep in.”

The man looks and sounds sympathetic enough, but Marlon scents in his direction and he smells excited. It sets off all kinds of warning bells in Marlon’s head. No one faced with a kit they believe is newly orphaned would smell excited unless they’re up to no good. “Take a powder, you crumb,” Marlon snarls.

The man comes closer. “You don’t need to be afraid. I mean no harm,” he cajoles.

“You ear blind? Scram!” Marlon scowls and flares, backing up. He isn’t afraid, but he’s on high alert now, giving the man his full focus. 

Too much focus.

Someone grabs him by his upper arms from behind with a victorious “Got him!” Marlon’s heart leaps in fright, red-hot rage flooding in to quench the brief fear. He trashes and roars, squirms, kicks, teeths all his teeth and drops full fangs, twists trying to bite. His captor curses. “This is a feisty one. Get the sack!”

“Silence him! The way he’s roaring he’ll call the attention of the whole neighbourhood,” the first man says.

Marlon finds himself slammed against a wall so hard he sees stars and his vision frays at the edges. He’s lifted and held up by his throat, dangling like a doll cutting off his air and silencing his roar abruptly. He keeps making a low-frequency sound in his breastbone that doesn’t rely on vocal cords. It’s a rumbling puttering, slower than a purr. He’s never heard it before and doesn’t know what it means except by instinct. It’s a menacing, threatening sound he feels himself doing rather than hears. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. His pulse roars in his ears and he only distantly hears his captor say “Be still. I’m just going to choke you out and you’ll be fine.”

In all the books he’s read they always say time slows down in moments like this. It doesn’t. You just have a lot more time to think than expected. Biology lessons, tips and self-defensive tricks taught by Luci and Michael flash by as if rifling through a deck of cards to glimpse the right one.

His sight is shrinking to pinpricks.

_There._ He makes a decision for a counter.

He throws his legs up to circle his assailant to pull him closer, then instead of trying to pry the fingers off his throat he reaches out to dig his claws―claws he doesn’t remember extending―deep into the sides of his captor's neck and pulls inward with all force he can muster, tearing open the jugular veins and windpipe. He feels the hot spurt of blood over his face and hands, then, he can breathe.

He and his captor both collapse in heaps on the ground. Marlon sucks in desperate lungfuls of air while stars dance in front of his eyes and his head spins. Blood is rushing in his head so loudly he can’t hear anything else except Luci’s voice internally, telling him to ‘ _Get up! Get up! Get up!_ ’

He struggles onto his legs, wobbling, falling forward and catching himself, intent on running away. A hand closes around his wrist, he jerks around swinging his hand fingers crooked and clawed aimlessly at the threat, catching the second man in the face snagging on something.

The man lets go and stumbles back raising a hand to cover an eye, the other eye wide with shock.

Marlon turns to keep him in sight raising his hands in preparation to defend himself.

His gaze snags on the eyeball stuck on his index claw, rendering most claws on that hand useless. He shakes his hand trying to get it off. It won’t. Stuck, stuck, stuck.

He pops the eyeball into his mouth without a thought and pulls it off with his teeth then spits it full force at the man. The Man staggers as if he’s been stabbed, paling to the point of looking green. His smell of fear is so strong it penetrates even the thick scent of blood and fire. Then he turns and runs.

Marlon takes two steps after him before he stops, chest heaving as if he's run a marathon despite the encounter having lasted less than a minute. He’s vibrating on the inside. He looks around, spots the second man lying in a pool of blood. For a moment there’s only emptiness and white noise inside of Marlon, then the rage boils over as if he’s a pressure chamber blowing its lid.

With a roar he attacks. A kick to the head. Another kick that flips the man to his back. Then Marlon’s straddling him, punching and clawing everywhere he can reach, laying into it with all his might in silent ferocity. Distantly he hears voices. People nearby. But he doesn’t care. Couldn’t stop if he tried.

Arvid. Arvid’s voice. 

“Nothing to see here. Just a snatcher getting his due. Move along.”

In his peripheral vision, he sees Arvid’s now familiar legs stopping nearby but he’s caught in a red haze roaring silently inside of him while he tears into the man who tried to take him. He can’t stop. Arvid keeps talking. It sounds like he’s talking through a thick glass wall.

“Hey, Peepers, you know he’s… nevermind. You’re right. Corpses identifiable by sight are overrated anyway. ...Maybe you s― Ouch. Okay, that’s, that’s gross. ...No, no. Don’t stop on my behalf. He deserves it. You go, kit. Let it all out. ….Maybe you could have let it out without spilling his insides too, but okay. ...That’s, that… no. Okay…”

It’s not until his arms start feeling too heavy to lift and his breath is too laboured to go on that the red haze starts dissipating and Marlon stops. He struggles to his feet and stares down at the man, so torn and bloody he’s unrecognizable to the naked eye. Marlon’s covered in blood. There’s blood on the cobbles, reddish black glistening in the lamplight.

The man is dead.

The realisation hits.

He’s killed someone.

He looks down at his hands, claws long and wicked, everything red and sticky covered with the metallic smelling blood. 

Blood of the man he killed.

His hands are shaking.

He closes his mouth to swallow dryly but bites himself in the lower lip and jerks in surprise at the pain of it, realising his fangs are too long. Longer than ever before.

Acknowledging one pain opens a floodgate for everything else. His fingers ache acutely the same way they do when they’ve been frozen numb and start thawing after hours of playing in the snow. His head is pounding, his eyes are pounding, his jaws ache, his lungs burn, and every breath feels scratchy and rough from being choked. He’s nauseous and light headed.

He stares at his shaking hands. His vision keeps blurring. He doesn’t get why until the first sob tears out of him. He makes a pitiful sound and looks up at Arvid who is carefully watching him.

Meeting his gaze is what triggers Arvid to move. “There you are. Come here, sweet kitty. You did well. You’re alright. I’ve got you.” He goes down on one knee in front of Marlon and holds out his arms. It’s all it takes for Marlon to fall into his embrace and cling, sob upon sob tearing out of him as if the world is ending. Arvid lifts him up and carries him, turning his head to put his lips to Marlon’s temple like Marlon himself had done to the kitling. He purrs his soothing dad-purr and coos encouragement. “You fought brilliantly. It’s okay to cry. You did so well. Let it out, sweet kitty, let it out. It’s over. I’m here now. My fierce little Ares. Cry yourself out, I’m here.”

It feels like the tears will never stop coming, but eventually, they do. Sobs become occasional hiccups. He feels drained and empty, hanging onto Arvid weakly with his head lolling against Arvid’s shoulder. Arvid puts him down by a water trough for horses on a big parking lot. He lets Arvid pull his hands down into the cold water, lets him scrub them clean of blood. He stands there impassively while Arvid digs up his dirty uniform shirt, dips it in water then sets to washing Marlon’s face with it. It smells of dirt and grime and stale sweat, but mostly, it smells of Arvid. It’s a good smell even at its worst. It’s safe, and kind, and fun, and everything Marlon needs right now. The water in the through turns red from Arvid’s efforts but at least the smell of coppery blood isn’t clogging up Marlon’s nostrils anymore. “What were you doing there?” Marlon asks dully when he finds his voice.

“You think I would just let you wander off like ‘Hai-dee-ho, time to go’ after a night like ours, do you? Nu-uh. I followed you. But I kept my distance not to alert you to my presence or I would have been there in time to have your back.” His lip quirk in a soft smirk in one corner. “Not that you needed it. That was some fine thinking, going for his throat instead of panicking.”

“I panicked,” Marlon argues unconvincingly mostly just to argue. 

Arvid huffs in amusement and shakes his head with an affectionate smile. “No, you did not. If you had you would have kicked uselessly and scratched at his hands, maybe even forgotten to drop claws. One never knows. I’ve seen it happen. For some, it’s completely instinctive, but others are not so lucky. Here, blow your nose in this,” he orders and hands Marlon the shirt with a corner that isn’t wet yet. 

Marlon obeys, getting some more blood out, none of it his. He smacks his lips feeling how dry his mouth is and turns to bend over the through to dip his face into it to drink deeply. He hears Arvid berating himself about how he should have thought of that before he begun to clean Marlon, but Marlon is beyond care. Everything already tastes of blood so what does it matter? He’s had an eyeball in his mouth. 

The thought almost makes his stomach turn. He stands back up. Arvid is there instantly to dry him off with the already wet part of the shirt. “I had an eyeball in my mouth,” Marlon says out loud, his voice sounding hollow in his ears.

“That was such a powerful move you have no idea, Peepers. Athena and her strategy are all good and well, but eye to eye, intimidation can do half the work for you. His fear when you spit the eyeball back at him was so strong it made me sneeze.”

Marlon feels a weak tendril of humour unfurl. His lips twitch. “I have never seen anyone turn green before. But how did they know who I was?”

Arvid's expression turns grim. "They didn't. Had they succeeded in capturing you it would have been better for you if they did. Then at least you might have been reunited with your pack for a ransom. No, they were Snatchers. The war creates a lot of orphans and kits that get separated from their parents. Snatchers catch those who are unfortunate and enslave them or sell them to others to use as cheap labour. You could have found yourself chained up to a workstation, only getting fed if you produced a certain quota.”

Snatchers. Another thing Marlon has never heard about. It's horrifying. Something should be done about that. “Does the police know about this?"

Arvid huffs. “They do. But Snatchers and those they work for, make a lot of money and too many cops take bribes to look the other way.”

Marlon's brain tries to work out a solution but thinking is like walking through knee deep sludge so he gives up for now.

Arvid takes the opportunity to grab Marlon by the shoulders and lean in to thoroughly mark him up with both his temple and neck glands, claiming him. A couple of hours ago Marlon would have objected but not now. While it tells anyone who scents Marlon that he belongs to Arvid, it works as a balm for Marlon - an olfactory reassurance that there's an adult who cares, who is there for him.

“You had me fooled. For a little while, I thought you were too trusting of strangers since you took to me so easily. But clearly, that's not the case. The guy had barely said hello before you were backing away,” Arvid says, leaning back to look Marlon in the eyes.

“He smelled excited. Nobody smells excited to see a kit unless they're another kit, or a relative.”

“Perceptive." Arvid stuffs the soiled shirt into the bag and puts the bag on himself like a backpack though it's not. Then he hoists Marlon up to carry him against his chest, legs dangling on either side of his hips.

“I can walk," Marlon says unconvincingly, wrapping his arms around Arvid's neck.

“If you had to, I'm sure you could. But the body has a limited amount of energy. In a fight situation like you were in you burn in minutes what you normally would burn in hours. I can smell how fatigued you are so I'll carry you until I've gotten some food in you. What? You don't think I can care for a kit as well as you can for an O?” Arvid says and starts walking away. Then he smirks. "You'd be absolutely right. I'm not the fatherly type. I have no clue how to deal with kits, hence the crying they do around me. But I make a decent friend and I know how to care for fellow soldiers, rookies or not.”

Marlon burrows his nose against Arvid's neck. "I think you'd make a great dad."

Arvid chuckles, still purring his parental comforting purr. “I can see why you'd think that." He doesn't expand on the statement. Marlon closes his eyes.

Marlon is jostled awake when Arvid puts him down on a bench in an unknown part of the city. He blinks blearily up at Arvid. It’s daylight out, albeit a gloomy day. Arvid holds out something to him. It's a chocolate bar that feels warm and mushy to the touch. “Here. Eat this."

“I can't. I feel I'll."

“Which is why you're going to eat it. You'll feel better afterwards. I promise,” Arvid insists and rips the tin foil wrapping for him.

“Where did you get this anyway?” Marlon asks and takes a bite. The chocolate feels too sweet and sticky, growing in his mouth as he chews. He eats anyway because Arvid said it would make him feel better.

Arvid squats in front of him and starts pulling out other edibles from pockets and inside his jacket. “I stole it for you. It’s incredible what you can get away with carrying an unconscious kit. I simply jostled anyone carrying groceries or baskets with food then excused myself feigning traumatization. I’m already dead inside and can’t fake the scent but you more than made up for it. Used my free hand to shove my catch between our bodies. And look!” He pulls up a bottle of coke as if it’s the grand prize in a lottery. “You better enjoy it while we still can. I’ve heard they’re going to prohibit the use of the coca leaves they use to make it a fun drink.”

Nauseous or not, Marlon makes grabby hands. Coca-cola is sold at pharmacies and the adults won’t let any kits or Juvies in the pack drink it as anything but medicine. Just like other carbonated drinks, it has that fizzy feel that can make you sneeze if you’re not used to it as the bubbles pop near the receptors used for siphoning. It’s a sweet and tart drink with loads of caffeine in it and, as Arvid said, coca leaf extract. Marlon has had it twice to the same effect. He’d been perked up and energized, feeling positive and full of initiative. The adults won’t let him have coffee either and it doesn’t even taste very well without cream and sugar. ‘You sleep too little as it is’, they’d say.

Arvid chuckles at his show of greed and opens the glass bottle using his teeth, spits the cap on the ground and hands the bottle over.

Marlon drinks. He loves both the taste and the effect of the drink. He downs half the bottle in one go before he stops to offer Arvid the rest. 

Arvid smiles and shakes his head. “I already had one. You eat and drink and you’ll be fit for fight in no time.”

“I feel like a weakling,” Marlon admits and pops some more chocolate into his mouth. 

“Why?”

“Because I cried. Michael and Luci never cry.”

“How do you know? Were you there the first time they killed? The first time they saw hundreds of people burn alive? Found a mutilated kitling still alive? You weren’t, so you don’t know. Crying isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of emotional overload. _Any_ emotion. You can cry from happiness, anger, sadness, fatigue. Any emotion that gets strong enough. It’s not a weakness to have feelings. And, Marlon, if you were my son I’d be darn proud of you. You’re intelligent, inquisitive, can think on your feet. You’re kind, polite, but don’t take any bullshit. And you’re fierce and brave in a way many full-grown soldiers would envy. On top of it all, you see a problem and you instantly try to figure out a way to fix it. It’s admirable. You’re just a kit but if you don’t go get yourself killed prematurely, you’ll go far. Mark my words on that, Peepers.”

Marlon feels a lot better. It’s hard to say if it’s the praise, the chocolate and coke, or a mix of both but he’s no longer feeling lightheaded and nauseous. He smiles at Arvid and doesn’t withhold his proud purr.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Handie-Talkie is an actual thing. The first walkie-talkie were the ones they carried as a backpack, these ones came out a few years later and were called handie-talkies since they were handheld. ^^ Which is confusing since we call the handheld ones walkie talkie today. :)
> 
> I've done a lot of half-assed research for this chapter. Meaning, I've googled a lot of stuff, skimmed through the info and gone 'yeah, yeah, whatever.' Cherry picking what I want and bent the rest.


	8. Swing Kit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon the kit discovers a new world he knows is forbidden to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: recreational drug use, underage drug use, underage drinking, sex, old slang, verse'specific slang.
> 
> Inspiration for this chapter: <https://youtu.be/mHANNkKBSNU>  
> Swing in this world is a lot like the swing in our world but it lacks the male-leading-female rule and is ofttimes danced with several partners. :)
> 
> The song Marlon first hears, that was playing on repeat while I was playing to set the mood for me: <https://youtu.be/rPnXCPmrV3Y>

* * *

“It’s still burning,” Marlon says with awe in his voice from his vantage point on the roof. 

“Mhm,” Laurent agrees. He’d spotted them from the roof a moment ago and waved. Marlon and Arvid had climbed up to join him, getting a huge grin and a fist bump for a greeting.

“It went down like I told you, Peepers,” Arvid says and points. “The fire was stopped over there by the big parking lot. But I’m surprised the area over there isn’t burning,” he adds and points another direction.

“Oh, that’s all your doing,” Laurent says and turns his head to look at Marlon. “That’s Bolton territory. You warned us, we warned the Boltons, the Swifts, the Jayhawks, and the Cavellis. The Perlino Arc used to lie there and the Boltons blew it up in a controlled manner about the same time as the first bomb fell. Then they pumped water from the harbour to soak as much of the Arc as they could. It’s easier to soak a building if it’s not intact, see? Any effort from firefighters on that side of the city was redirected there rather than the fire. So when the fire reached the Arc it couldn’t pass and to the left of it you’ve got the bay and on the other side Broad Street and all those old stone buildings, creating a natural barrier.” 

The Perlino Arc is―was―a very long, arced building used mainly for offices. When it was built it was an architectural pride of the city but had since fallen in disrepair. Perhaps some will think it a shame to see a such a prominent landmark ruined but Marlon would rather see one building ruined―historical landmark or not―than have the whole city burn. 

“Smart. But they blew it up, you say? I need to have a chat with them about how they got that much explosives and could facilitate such a controlled explosion with such short notice,” Arvid says.

“You really don’t. But they used up their stash of explosives to pull it off. Thankfully, I might add. I was never comfortable moving around in the area they kept it,” Laurent says with a self-conscious little smile as if he finds it shameful to be afraid of explosives.

Arvid frowns. “Still. Tearing a building down like that… it must have been pre-planned.”

“Oh, definitely.” Laurent nods decisively. “They had several plans for how to deal with a fire depending on the direction it came from. Their Main came from Katowice a few years back.”

“Ooh,” Arvid says and nods as if it all makes sense.

“Katowice?” Marlon asks, prompting an explanation.

“A city in Poland that burned to the ground about a decade ago. Haven’t met a survivor that _wasn’t_ obsessed with fire safety,” Arvid explains.

Laurent keeps looking at Marlon with this peculiar smile on his face. Marlon starts getting uncomfortable under the constant scrutiny and gives him a ‘what?’ look. “You saved a lot of lives tonight, Williams. Thank you for that,” Laurent answers the wordless prompt.

That feels good. Marlon would take more pride if it wasn't for the guilt of knowing that his pack are responsible for what's killing Laurent or how much more could have been done with an even earlier warning. “Any losses in your pack?" he asks to torture himself.

“Two dead, one broken leg and a couple of minor injuries."

“I'm sorry,” Marlon says.

Laurent shakes his head. "It's alright. They chose it. Old Joe had passed his 130th presenting day and struggled with chronic pain. He could barely move around without help. So he and his mate Penny chose to take a fix and go to bed. She was almost as old as him. We could have lost half the pack without the warning.”

“A fix?" Marlon asks and looks between Laurent and Arvid for an explanation.

Arvid chuckles. “Drugs. I can promise you that old Joe and Penny didn't suffer much at the end.”

Laurent nods his agreement. "They were smiling in their sleep when their oldest son put the salt on them and said goodbye.”

"Say, since you owe Mar, could you do us a favour?” Arvid asks slyly.

Laurent narrows his eyes with a careful smirk. “Sure. Depends. I don't leave open-ended promises."

Arvid chuckles. "Nothing big. Just some clean clothes for Peepers.”

Laurent relaxes. "I can do that.”

"And then another thing…” Arvid adds getting Laurent suspicious again. “I want to swing a wing, down a gallon of giggle water, fix me up, and get French braided without any bluenoses flipping their wigs. The only place around here I knew of where I could do all of that in one place is a bit too hot for me right now,” he says and gestures at the fire on the other side of the bay.

Laurent grins. “And here I thought you were looking to pull a priceless. You used to go to the Jayhawks’ place, huh? The Sanctuary is better if you’re a hoofer.” He turns around and points. “If you go down this street, then turn…” he gives a description of how to get to the place Arvid is looking for before turning to Marlon. “Most of our stuff burned. I can still get you new duds, but they might not be a perfect fit nor of the quality you're used to.”

"Unless they're drenched in blood too anything is fine,” Marlon assures him. 

"Fab. Wait here,” Laurent says with a lopsided smirk. “I'll be back in a few." He goes towards the other end of the building, ruffling Marlon's hair as he passes. Marlon sputters and Laurent chuckles and gives him a wink before taking up a run to make an impressive jump between this rooftop and the next.

Marlon turns to Arvid. “Okay, a translation, please. Giggle water is alcohol. Fix you up? You mean drugs, right? As in, you want to get high?”

"Correct, Peepers.”

"But what is swing a wing and getting French braided? I know you aren't talking about your hair because it's not long enough.”

Arvid sniggers. "You a hoofer, kitty?”

"I can dance. We have parties sometimes and they taught us several dances. It's fun sometimes.”

"But you're not a swing kit. No matter. I'll teach you. Swing is a dance. To swing a wing means to dance swing.”

“And getting French braided?”

Arvid grins with too much teeth. "It's to do with sex.”

Marlon makes a grimace that draws a snigger out of Arvid. "But what is it?” Marlon still wants to know.

“It's really a female expression since they have one more hole. It means to be knotted in every hole at once. But since I only have two I'm hoping to find someone to ride me while I get knotted from both ends. What was it you called it? Penis poking? That's right. It's as fun to poke as to be poked. Believe me.” Arvid waggles his eyebrows.

"Ew, no. I won't ever think that."

Arvid shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe you're right. But I'll stick to it being your loss if you don't find pleasure in it after you've presented.”

Marlon appreciates that Arvid doesn't dismiss his opinions with 'you don't know until you're presented’.

* * *

There's nothing wrong with the clothes. The fabric might be low quality but they fit well enough and the scent of blood no longer sticks to Marlon like a ghost. He gave his bloodied clothes to Laurent since they'd be good to have after a wash considering how the Hales had lost a lot of belongings in the fire.

Laurent stayed behind to finish his guard duty while Arvid and Marlon climbed down to go find the Sanctuary.

The club they're looking for is just a small, nondescript door in an alley, guarded by a huge, brutish looking fellow who've had his nose broken too many times.

The man holds out an arm in front of the door to block their way. “Sorry, but I can't let the kit in."

Arvid puts an arm around Marlon's shoulders and pulls him close. “Wherever I go, he goes."

“I understand that you don't want to leave your son, Sir, but this is really not a kits’ venue.”

"Neither is a war zone, yet here we are,” Arvid argues with an upward quirk to his lips. “My boy's experienced more trauma tonight than anyone should during a lifetime. If anyone deserves to swing a wing it's him. Besides…” Arvid sticks his hand down the back of his pants and when he pulls it out again his fingers are covered with slick. He leans close to the man with lowered eyelids and one of those grown-up if-you’re-good-you-can-poke-me smirks, and drags his fingers against the man's lips. The man opens his mouth to suck them clean, lowering his own eyelids and starting to smell of arousal.

Grown-ups are weird. If someone he just met stuck their fingers on his lips he'd bite them, not suck them. But the brute looks like Arvid is offering him ambrosia.

Okay, Marlon will admit that any O that smells good will smell a lot better when they're in Heat. Even to a kit the scent is fairly pleasant. But still. This is ridiculous. At least kits don’t go loopy from it.

“Okay. You can go in,” the brute says with a rough voice.

"Come see me after your shift," Arvid purrs and rubs his temple against the brute's cheek. Marlon makes a gagging noise and wraps a possessive arm around Arvid's leg, glaring at the brutish bouncer.

Arvid chuckles and the brute gives Marlon an amused glance before holding the door open for them.

Arvid gives the man a final wink before leading Marlon inside.

They walk along a narrow, badly lit corridor. “I thought you wanted Alphas to deserve you?” Marlon asks.

"Oh, he will. Plus didn't you smell how absolutely lovely he―? Forget it. It's the hassle of having Heats. Smell a handsome fella and sense goes flying out the window. And that fella sure is handsome.”

"His nose was flat and skewed, his brow low and his ears looked like broccoli. You don't even know what eye colour he has. He was _not_ handsome.”

"'Looked?’ Are you a Prog or something?” Arvid chuckles and shakes his head. “I don't care if he _looks_ like a sack of potatoes if he smells lovely. But yes, flare colour is important. But I know he won't have eyes like yours and you have at least ten years before you're on the market so in the meantime I will go by my nose. Besides, you've already told me you won't be available even after you've presented, so…” he shrugs and waves his hand dismissively.

Marlon side-eyes him but he has none of that leery vibe that grown-ups that ask Aiden when he's presenting have, so Marlon decides he is flattered. It’s just more talk about his eye colour, like other people fawn over Aiden’s. Arvid is good like that. Liking purple better than red. “Why did he assume I was your son?" he asks instead. "We smell nothing alike."

“You know I said many kits are orphaned by the war? Well, many parents lose their kits too. I've marked you up so well that he thought I'd adopted you.”

Marlon purrs. He likes that idea. 

Arvid huffs. “You know, if we weren't about to do what we're about to do I should have had a talk with you about why you're purring right now and why you didn't call for your pack when the Snatchers took you. Sadly for you, you're stuck with me and not someone responsible and sensible.”

Marlon forgets to answer as the corridor ends at a steep stairwell with red wall sconces. From downstairs he can hear music and smell a multitude of strong scents - sweat, alcohol, sex, smoke, food.

The music is quick and upbeat. Then, a woman starts to sing.

~ _My fur coat's sold_  
 _Oh Gods ain't it cold_  
 _But I'm not gonna holler_  
 _Cause I've still got a dollar_  
 _And when I get low_  
 _Oh, I get high_ ~

He's never heard music quite like it. The lyrics are like something from one of those books aunt Jane reads to him and the music reminds of the slow jazz his grandparents will put on and dance to when they come together after being parted, but this is as if you’d put your finger on the gramophone disk and spun it really fast. Excited, he pushes past Arvid to get down to the bottom first, hearing Arvid chuckle behind him. At the bottom of the stairs there’s an entry with a drapery in front of it. He pulls it aside and stops to stare. There’s a big locale there. A stage with a big band playing, a man and a woman singing, a dance floor in front of it where people are dancing like their lives depended on it. Scattered tables further back and couches and loungers by the walls. It’s clear what they’re for and that if Arvid insists he’ll get his French braid over there. Smoke drifts lazily like low hanging clouds and everywhere things have been decorated with second rate, dark red velvet and golden tassels. On the other side of the room there’s a bar. About half of everyone in here, Alphas and Omegas alike, wear kilts or these colourful, flared skirts that flare beautifully when they dance. 

“Is all the red going to be a problem for you, Peepers?” Arvid asks coming up behind him.

“What? No. Why?” Marlon answers in bewilderment trying to look everywhere at once to take in all the dancers, card players, drinkers, and fornicators.

“Lovely. No reason. Come on.” Arvid ushers him inside and steers him towards the bar. Arvid’s barely set foot in before an Alpha deep-purrs him. Thankfully Arvid doesn’t stop. He steers Marlon with a hand on the shoulder. When they pass the dance floor Marlon makes big eyes at the dancers, feeling his body start moving with the rhythm. Arvid leans forward to be heard in the noise. “Later! First we get my so called Heat sickness cured and some hooch, then I’ll teach you how to swing.”

Marlon turns his head to nod. He doesn’t need Arvid to teach him when there’s a whole floor of people dancing. He could just stand to the side and try to mimic them until he gets it right. But right now he feels more overwhelmed and lost than he did out in the streets. He kind of wants to cling to Arvid’s leg and peek at things from a safe vantage point until he gets a grip on everything. All things inside of this room fall into the categories ‘forbidden’, ‘unsuitable’, and ‘not for kits’ and he loves it. He loves the inhibitions displayed all over. People on the dance floor are not holding back, people having sex are porking like they were alone in their own bedroom, people laughing are laughing boisterously, many wear flamboyant clothes. Mostly it’s the Alphas wearing the most colourful items. Arvid might claim he doesn’t care for looks but Marlon sees him eyeing an Alpha wearing an ultramarine skirt with turquoise details and a matching shirt with flowing sleeves. His hat is adorned with peacock feathers. Marlon’s dad is like that when he’s not wearing a uniform. He wears the most brilliant colours and fantastic cuts he can get his hands on: robes, dresses, coats - anything. He’s told Marlon it works as well for humans as it does for birds. If you’re in competition with someone who smells about as good as you, you are one up on them because you draw attention. You also risk getting challenged more often but if you’ve got the spine to back up your flamboyant clothing choice both Alphas and Omegas will be drawn to and defer to you. Mostly it’s high ranking individuals dressing extravagantly, he’d said.

Marlon had found that confusing at the time since grandpa Jed always wore grays or blacks, three piece suits. He’d asked Jed about it. Jed had confirmed what he’d been told, but added ‘If you can draw the same attention and radiate the same authority in muted clothing you are one up on the peacocks. Plus it draws attention to other details.’ He’d hiked up his suit sleeves to reveal the golden bracelets and pointed at the pocket watch chain as well as the fine stitching that declared the suit to be of the finest quality.

In here there’s nobody wearing custom made suits. Many people wear regular street wear. A lot of the people wearing skirts wear them layered to give them volume. Marlon also wants a skirt that flares when he spins.

By the bar Arvid pulls two bar stools close to each other, jumps up on one and pats the other for Marlon to climb up on.

The bartender doesn’t bat an eyelash at Marlon’s presence. “What are you having?” she asks Arvid.

“Don’t know yet. Got no lettuce,” Arvid answers, rubs his neck and holds his hand over the disk for the bartender to sniff.

The bartender scents him and smirks. “I’ll be back in a bit then,” she says and goes to take another customer’s order instead.

She’s barely left until a deep-purring Alpha sidles up to Arvid. “Hi, Sheba. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Sure,” Arvid answers with a flirty smile.

“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” Marlon hedges, leaning on Arvid’s shoulder to look at the Alpha.

The Alpha scoffs. “Scram, kit.”

“On second thought,” Arvid says dropping all flirtiness, “I’m rationed.”

“Aw, come on. You can’t be serious? You want me to buy alcohol for a hecking kit?” the Alpha protests, scent souring.

“If that’s what he wants, yes. We’re a package deal.”

The Alphas scowls deeply. “This is ridiculous.”

“Don’t snap your cap at me. Take it or leave it. No. Just leave it. I’m not interested in anyone who won’t care as well for my son as for me,” Arvid counters. Marlon might love him a little. Or a lot.

The Alpha backs away with a dissatisfied twist to his mouth.

Arvid turns to Marlon. “You’re a well-raised kit. What’s the first rule for courting an O?”

“Take care of their needs?”

“Exactly. And if you’re my son, what is my most pressing need?”

“I’d say to get knotted but the answer you’re looking for is to take care of me, right?”

Arvid sniggers. “Right on both accounts, Peepers,” he confirms with a wink.

Someone must have listened in or perhaps just knew how to flirt with Os like Arvid because suddenly another deep-purring Alpha circles them both with his arms to put two drinks on the bar, one in front of each of them at the same time as the bartender places a platter with nuts, cheese and salami in front of them. “A Bee’s Knee’s for the boy and a Corpse Reviver for the Sheik,” the Alpha says smoothly and lets his arm drop away from Marlon while keeping it around Arvid. “Anything else I can get you?”

Marlon leans in to scent the Alpha quickly. He smells okay to Marlon. He doesn’t look like much; Medium length, thin with a receding hairline and round glasses but he smells healthy and prosperous enough and his golden flare has a high luminosity. Marlon looks at Arvid and asks “Bada-bing, bada-boom?”

Arvid laughs and spins around on his stool to face his suitor. “The kit approves of you but we need some fixin’,” he says with a grin.

“Up or down?” the Alpha asks. Arvid points up. The Alpha sticks his hand in his pocket and comes up with a little paper bag. He plucks two capsules that look like medicine from it and pockets it again. “You too, kit?” he asks.

Marlon throws a look at Arvid who’s watching him with an amused smirk before he nods eagerly at the Alpha. “Yes. Me too.”

“Hold on.” Arvid puts a hand over the capsules in the Alpha’s hand and leans in to talk straight into Marlon’s ear with a lowered voice. “If you’ve got a heart condition this might do you in. If you take too many during one night it might also kill you. I don’t think the second option will be a problem but you need to know it. You got a failing heart?” he asks. Marlon shakes his head. “You still want to try it, knowing it could kill you?” Marlon nods. Arvid leans back and removes his hand from the capsules. “Well then. We are clear for takeoff.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later Marlon’s biggest problem in life is _gone_. He always gets to hear that he thinks too much. Not now. Now he’s soaring without a single thought in his head that pertains to anything but here and now. He’s left Arvid getting knotted by the bar to seek out the dance floor. There are no limits in life. He searches out the best dancers he can find and tries to mimic their movements to their great amusement. One O takes pity on him and slows down her movements to teach him the basic steps. He soon gets the hang of it. And he feels so energized. He's had a constant feeling of fatigue that he hadn't even realized he's had until now when it's gone. That's what you get when you can't shut your thoughts off long enough to get a full night's sleep.

Swing is exhilarating. Not only is it fast paced and creative but it doesn't follow the rule of the O leading the dance. Instead, there's a flowing switch-off between great dancers or the better dancer leads no matter sex or gender, showing off and acting as a support for their partners. There are even a couple of older Juvies on the dance floor. Nobody acts as if a kit isn't supposed to be here. He dances with two Os at once, dances with an enthusiastic Alpha that shows him some killer diller moves, switches partner with each new song.

Suddenly Arvid is there, sweeping him up chirping amused and admonishing. He carries Marlon off the dance floor to the bar. “I know you feel like you can dance forever but you need to drink water now and then,” he says fondly. He hands Marlon another drink and a big glass of water. He looks a lot better now that he's been knotted, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. The Alpha is nowhere to be seen.

“It's so fun!" Marlon declares and downs his water. “How can people have so much fun when the city is burning and people are dying?”

“ _Because_ the city is burning. Like the song. When we get low, we get high,” Arvid answers with a fond smile at Marlon’s enthusiasm.

"This is the best! You're the best! I wish you were my real dad!" Marlon beams at him, taking a gulp of his drink just to shudder as it goes down. It almost bounces right up again but he likes the cottony, buzzed feeling the alcohol gives. 

“With eyes like yours I'm glad I'm not,” Arvid says with a next to dreamy smile. Marlon frowns in confusion. Thinking is a lot harder than usual due to the one drink he’s had and that's great, but he thinks he should understand this.

"There you are!" Laurent says shoving his way through the revellers. “Hoped I might find you here. I'm done with my shift now and thought I'd join you to celebrate everyone not dying because of you.”

He's just made it to them when Arvid suddenly skunks and curls in on himself with disgust.

Laurent flares his brilliant blue and licks his lips with wide, confused eyes. “What did I do?"

Marlon pinches his nose shut with his fingers, grimacing. “Id dott tnow!"

“I can't believe that thought even crossed my mind! Oh, that's gross!” Arvid complains loudly.

"What is?” Laurent asks, completely bewildered.

“He said he wishes I was his dad and I was thinking, I said― Oh, _darn_ , that's disgusting.” Arvid hides his face behind his hands. Laurent looks to Marlon for answers.

“He said he's glad he isn't since something about my eyes. He likes them.”

Laurent's eyes go wide at first then he bursts out laughing. He laughs until he doubles over.

“Oh yes, you go ahead and laugh at my lecherous, _disgusting_ mind," Arvid scoffs. "Darn, that was gross. I can't― Ugh," he complains.

“I'd say that since you're high and drunk and skunked the moment you realized where your mind wandered off to, your honour is intact,” Laurent says between giggles.

“High or not it shouldn't have gone there," Arvid whines but his scent is starting to smell normal again.

“I'm high too. Can anyone fill me in on why he skunked?” Marlon says looking at Laurent.

“He practically asked when you were presenting and then got disgusted by himself,” Laurent explains with a snigger.

"What's wrong with that? Adults ask my brother when he thinks he'll present all the time.” Marlon knows very well it’s because of sex he just doesn’t get what’s wrong about asking. So they want to wait a couple of years to be poked by someone who hasn’t presented just yet? What’s wrong with that?

Laurent frowns and Arvid makes a gagging noise then says "People are disgusting. You’re talking about the red-eyed one?"

“Yes."

“You've got a red-eyed brother?” Laurent awes. "I thought your Patriarch was the only red-eyed person that exists?"

“Nu-uh. Aunt Lucifer has them too. And my great grandma, and uncle Boone. But he died shortly after I was born. It's not that big of a deal.”

“I agree with Peepers. It's not. You see red eyes everywhere. On paintings and posters. And every other doggo has red in their eyes. But lilac? Now that's special,” Arvid says.

“And that's why he asked when you'll become an Alpha," Laurent clarifies. It’s not what Marlon wants to be clarified.

"Never. I'm gonna choose to be an Omega like Arvid," Marlon says decisively and nods to himself.

Laurent sniggers. “It doesn't work that way. We haven't had a male O for generations in our pack.”

"Hey, don't rain on his parade. Perhaps his pack consists of mostly related members? Perhaps all the nearby packs have suddenly disappeared? Or perhaps nature is just feeling random? You never know, he might present as an O,” Arvid says in Marlon’s defense.

“All that matters?” Laurent asks.

“Mhm. With very little influx of unrelated Alphas chances are, if it’s a large pack, boys are going to start presenting as Omegas and wander off. Same in an area that goes from being dominated by several packs to having just one or two severely decimated packs left. How is it this is such a mystery outside of Scandinavia? It’s as if as soon you reach the mainland continent of Europe common knowledge is no longer common. _Everyone_ knows this where I’m from. We can predict how we’ll present with at least...” Arvid holds out his hand palm down and wiggles it in a gesture of approximation, “I’d say 80-90% certainty. I knew I’d be an O when I was younger than Peepers because our Alphas were all related and all nearby packs were offshoots of our pack.”

“Pfft. Braggart. But we can predict with 99% surety that if we’re boys we’ll be Alphas and if we’re girls we’ll be Os,” Laurent says with a smirk before directing himself towards Marlon. “But you think you’ll be an O, huh?”

“Yes.”

“In that case..,” Laurent leans a hand nonchalantly on the bar disk between then with a sly smirk and, facing Marlon, says “When do you think you will present?” and wiggles his eyebrows.

Arvid, mid-swallow, snorts and sprays his drink laughing. “You two, I swear you're the cutest," he giggles.

“Cute? I thought it was disgusting?” Marlon asks with a confused frown.

Laurent huffs and grins, looking down at the floor. “I was just joking around," he says but there's faint distress and sadness in his scent and the grin looks plastered on for show.

"No, no, no," Arvid giggles and hooks his arm around Laurent's neck to pull him close and pat him roughly on the chest in a comradely manner. “When an adult does it it's disgusting because they've looked at you and thought a sexual thought about you. Even if they age you up in their minds like I apparently did, it's bad. But when another minor does it it's strategy, genuine curiosity, or simply joking around.”

“Oh,” Marlon says, finally understanding.

“Wait. You meant―?” Laurent says, and then lets out a relieved laugh, the sadness and distress dissipating from his scent. “I thought you meant I smell disgusting,” he says with a big grin.

“What? No!” Marlon sniggers. “No, you smell great. Nothing wrong with your scent. Except for the whole dying business,” he says and waves his hand dismissively and reaches for his drink.

Laurent squeezes his eyes shut laughing silently with shoulders jumping and Arvid reaches out to pluck Marlon’s drink from his hand. “That’s it. No more hootch for you,” he says, eyes crinkling from an amused grin.

“Hey! That’s mine! I’ve only had one before this one,” Marlon protests and makes grabby hands. To his surprise, Arvid surrenders the coveted drink easily.

Laurent is still laughing in silent huffs. He opens his eyes to look at Marlon who is cradling his drink possessively without drinking. If Arvid tries to take it from him there must be a good reason, but still. It’s his. “Boy, you’re quite a party pooper aren’t you?” Laurent sniggers.

“What? Am I not supposed to say it out loud? Anybody can smell it and it’s really confusing because you also smell prosperous and fit as a fiddle. Is this one of those things we’re not allowed to talk about? I know there are rules. They’re stupid rules because if you don’t talk about something or ask questions you won’t get answers or solve problems. But if this is one of the forbidden things just tell me and I’ll never mention it again,” Marlon babbles.

Laurent looks anywhere but at Marlon as he shakes his head, and draws breath to speak, still smiling, but no words come out at first. Then he runs his hand through his hair and sighs. “No, it’s okay. Um. We can talk about it.”

“Are you in pain?” Marlon wants to know. “You don’t smell it, but.” He offers Laurent his drink since it so conveniently solves the problem of Arvid telling him not to drink any more alcohol but allowing him to keep the drink. This way he himself gets to make the choice not to drink. Plus adults are always talking about ‘liquid courage’ so Laurent might need some. Personally, Marlon can’t imagine anything he would need alcohol or drugs to dare to do, even if this whole alcohol and drug business is marvellous.

Laurent accepts the drink with a grateful look and a small smile. “Thanks.” He takes a sip before he answers. “No. I’m not in pain. The pain comes later, I know, since we’ve lost several pack members to whatever this is already. But right now I don’t feel sick. I get a bit more easily tired from exertion than I used to, but that’s it.”

“Are you afraid?” Marlon asks. Arvid has leaned back against the bar stroking his lips and beard, covering his mouth while watching them passively with keen eyes. Marlon thinks he wonders if Marlon will tell Laurent what's making him sick. But Marlon isn't that stupid. He's not going to tell Laurent anything before he can hold up a solution at the same time. 'Oh yes, your pack is dying because we're greedy and sold out to Conservatives,’ isn't going to go down well.

Laurent hesitates before he nods. “Terrified. Nobody wants to die. But hey! Maybe it's a good thing our homes burned down?” he says in a joking tone. “We've wondered if perhaps it was something in the walls making us sick. We'd already scouted for another place to move so this just speeds up the process.”

Arvid interrupts with a question of his own. "Are you unhousing another pack?"

“No. Mostly Conservatives, a few Progs and two Primals. The adults are dealing with it as we speak and the Primals are offered new housing.”

Marlon's chest feels warm in dark contentment. He knows what a hostile takeover is. If Laurent feels it worth mentioning that the Primals are treated differently it means that the others are thrown out on their rumps or pay the price for trying to stay. That's good. Let the Conservatives suffer. “Have you lost many to the sickness?" he asks.

Now sadness sneaks back into Laurent's scent. “Anyone already sick from something else. All kits under the age of five. And no Omega has kept a pregnancy longer than three months since it started. Not everyone has fallen sick but we can't see a pattern to who gets taken or not. So, yes. I'm afraid. Both for myself and my loved ones.”

Marlon jumps off his stool to wrap himself around Laurent's midriff purring comfortingly like he would for a younger sibling. Laurent startles then huffs in bemusement.

“Isn't he adorable when he gets like this?" Arvid says to Laurent. "When I was chained up in a dungeon―don’t ask―he spent the night sitting outside the door purring a mate's soothing to comfort me. It was the cutest thing.”

Laurent chuckles and puts an arm around Marlon's back in a one-armed embrace to wordlessly accept the comfort, patting awkwardly. 

“A mate's? I didn't know that. I just did what dad does since it works on mom,” Marlon says without letting go of Laurent.

"It worked for me too, Peepers. Not for the same reasons, but it worked,” Arvid assures him. "Now what do you say we finish our drinks and hit the dance floor before I need to get myself braided?”

* * *

Downers are just as great as uppers but for a different reason. Instead of thinking about the here and now his thoughts drift from big, complicated problems to mundane peculiarities and back. But every part of him is relaxed, content and drowsy no matter what he’s thinking about. After they'd danced they'd gone to the back where the sofas and loungers are located so Arvid could have the most shameless type of sex with strangers. Arvid is currently pantless, knotted with his back to the chest of an Alpha on top of a sturdy, stuffed lounger, ridden by an O with her breasts bobbing free while a second Alpha has knotted Arvid’s mouth. Marlon doesn’t like the second Alpha based solely on the fact that Arvid can’t talk when someone pokes their penis into his mouth. Marlon allows it anyway because Arvid smells so happy. 

He didn’t allow it at first. No, at first he kept grabbing that damn penis shoving it away anytime it came close to Arvid’s mouth. Every time Arvid cracked up and the Alpha got mortified, losing his erection. It’s pretty nifty, how grown men lose their erection if they’re touched by a kit like that. Just touch, shrink, and Arvid was free to talk. But the Alpha had offered him a downer as a bribe. After Arvid had nodded his encouragement Marlon had accepted and is now curled up in the closest couch with Laurent, a Juvie girl called Buck from the Cavelli pack, a newly presented Alpha named Marshall from the Swifts, and two Jayhawks, Topper and Jitterbug. That’s not their real names. Marshall is the only one going by his real name. They even call Laurent Jumper. Not Marlon. He likes the name Laurent. It’s classy.

He likes Laurent, period. He’s got long, shiny black hair that reaches all the way down to brush his shoulders. He’s got bangs long enough to push behind his ears. Marlon pets his hair while Laurent is talking to Marshall and smoking a cigarette. Marlon decides he wants to keep Laurent. He makes him a promise he’ll save him. He doesn’t say it out loud. People will expect you to follow through quickly and he might not be able to do anything about it until he’s presented. Grownups don’t listen to kits and to save Laurent he needs them to listen. He pushes himself up from his slouch to mark Laurent up. There’s a sting of anger coming from Laurent’s scent at that. “Hey, hey,” he protests and grabs Marlon’s shoulders to keep him at bay. “You think you can just claim people because you’re a Williams?”

Marlon responds with a series of chirps and purrs and ‘mrrts’ rather than with words. He doesn’t even reflect on that he’s doing it, he just wants to convey that they’re friends now. When his brain is hooked in properly he can’t express himself primally this well but now he has no trouble making himself understood, going purely on instinct.

Laurent relaxes. “Oh,” he says lips quirking upward in a corner. Then he lets go to allow Marlon to mark him and leans in to mark Marlon back just as thoroughly. Marlon purrs in contentment.

* * *

The whole apartment is maybe one-third of Marlon’s room back home. It’s cold and drafty and the brutish bouncer had brought a bucket of water up from a pump in the courtyard of the building. Marlon’s not sure if the bouncer with the cauliflower ears and flat, skewed nose has given his name. If he did, Marlon didn’t catch it. The apartment has a small fold out table, lots of cupboards, a beat-up couch and a fairly large bed. The floor is covered in layers of rag rugs to keep the cold at bay and there are blankets and pillows everywhere. It’s clean and cosy despite the simplicity.

The first thing the bouncer did when Arvid and Marlon got inside was to conjure bread, stale cheese, and honey from a cupboard along with a pitcher of water from the bucket, then place his guests by the table so they could eat. Marlon is starving and a meal might never have tasted so good before. Arvid had been right. The bouncer shows he’s worthy. He deep-purrs for Arvid the whole meal. When Marlon has finished he decides he’ll take the couch so Arvid and the bouncer can do the whole poking business on the bed. He crawls onto the couch and starts marking it up, claiming it.

“Hey, Mar, you don’t do that when you’re a guest at somebody’s home,” Arvid admonishes.

“Oh, let him. Everybody needs a space that is only their own. As long as you’re here he can keep it,” the bouncer says with a little smile.

The bouncer is a good man. He knows what’s up. Arvid chose the right Alpha to take him home. By the scent of it, Arvid is thinking the same thing right now. Marlon wraps himself in blankets and lays down to sleep, leaving the grownups to their business.

He wakes up in the middle of the night from the cold and blinks in the dusky light from a small bed lamp. Arvid looks asleep, the bouncer spooning him. The bouncer is awake, though, resting his chin on Arvid’s shoulder, looking at Marlon with concerned eyes. When he sees Marlon is awake he chirps softly in question and raises the comforter on Arvid’s side invitingly.

Marlon tries to figure out if they’re knotted or not but decides it doesn’t matter. He untangles himself from the inadequate blankets and makes his way over to crawl into bed and fit himself into the spoon of Arvid’s chest. Arvid purrs contentedly in his sleep and wraps a warm arm around Marlon. As the bouncer lowers the blanket back over the three of them, he starts purring as well, content to share his bed with a temporary family.

“You’re a Packrunner,” Marlon states quietly.

“Yes. I came here two years ago when Texas was conquered by the Union. Been siderunning for the Hales ever since,” the bouncer answers just as quietly.

Marlon hums in contentment and closes his eyes. Packrunners are one no matter where they come from. This is how new packs are formed. He barely misses his own pack as he falls asleep.

* * *

It's not until late afternoon the next day that Marlon's adventures come to an end back at The Sanctuary.

They'd followed the bouncer back to work after a hearty but simple lunch to repeat yesterday's escapades. Right now they've paused their dancing to have a drink. Marlon's allowed himself one alcoholic drink since that's how much Arvid had let him drink yesterday before he'd said 'no more’. In hindsight, it might have been a joke about Marlon's lack of tact but Marlon doesn't want to risk disappointing him in case it wasn't. An Alpha had provided the drinks, uppers and snacks. Marlon has put the upper he'd been offered in his pocket for later. He’s got energy enough as it is at the moment. Arvid had chased the Alpha off as soon as his knot had gone down. When Marlon asked why, he answered 'I'm a share crop’. Marlon isn't even trying to make sense of that.

Arvid's smile suddenly falters and he falls silent mid-sentence, sniffing the air. “Uh-oh. Well, Peepers, it was nice knowing you but I need to scram," he says, downs his drink and jumps off his stool only to freeze where he stands. “Too late," he states and sits back down to lean nonchalantly against the bar.

"What do you mean?" Marlon asks. 

Arvid nods at something behind Marlon but Marlon smells it before he even turns around. Distress. A very high level of distress coming from his brother. The distress suddenly turns into spiky anger.

“ _Mar!_ " Aiden's voice is as sharp as his scent. Marlon turns around to see Aiden stand with his arms crossed over his chest tense like a steel wire with held back rage. “What the _heck_ were you thinking? Are you insane?! We've been worried to death!”

"Oh yeah? I bet it took a full day before any of you even noticed I was missing. I bet you didn't notice until you found out Arvid was gone,” Marlon sasses.

Aiden turns red in the face and flares. “Not true. I knew you were gone first thing in the morning. But fool me thought you were just in the darned caves as usual.” He pauses to pin Arvid with a baleful stare. “And _you_ ―!” He points at Arvid.

Arvid holds up his hands disarmingly. “Okay. I kept him in one piece. Will you at least give me a 30-second headstart before you try to catch me again?”

" _Catch you?!_ You think I'd break a Packrunner's promise?!” The very suggestion enrages Aiden. He practically bounces where he stands. “But you can count yourself lucky aunt Lucifer had a panic attack trying to crawl to that tight tunnel or she might have torn you to pieces. Which is what you deserve.”

Arvid looks at Marlon. “Am I missing something here, Peepers?" 

"The note. I told them I promised on our pack that you'd get your freedom if you just told me everything you knew of use to us.”

"Really? You wily, scheming kitty-cat. Any plans to inform me of that promise?” Arvid asks dryly.

"Not really, no," Marlon says to Arvid before turning back to Aiden. “It took you long enough to find me," he accuses.

Aiden grits his teeth. "I lost track of you where you’d crossed water. I've had to find and track you cold.”

"Water? We never crossed―" Marlon stops when he sees Arvid's expression. “When did we cross water?" he asks instead.

"When you napped after you'd met the one-eyed gentleman you eyeballed,” Arvid answers. "We wouldn't have had to if you'd just told me about your promise. If I didn't have to worry about getting caught again I could have seen you safely home. Your hospitality was great but the accommodations weren't exactly the Ritz,” Arvid jokes. 

“ _I'm_ seeing him safely home now," Aiden bites out. "Marlon, say goodbye. We're leaving."

Marlon doesn't want to, but knows he has to. He gets off his stool to give Arvid a clingy hug.

“Goodbye, Ares. It's been an honour getting to know you," Arvid mumbles into his hair hugging back.

"I'm going to miss you."

“Who knows, Peepers, maybe this isn't goodbye but ‘see you later’,” Arvid consolidates.

Aiden loses his patience. "That's enough," he says and scoops Marlon up, ripping him from the embrace and starts making his way towards the exit. He carries Marlon against his chest, hugging him close scenting and nuzzling him. The anger is still there but with his nose pressed against Aiden's neck, the worry and fear at the base of it are unmistakable. Marlon knew Aiden would worry. If anyone would, it'd be him.

The first couple of blocks Aiden won't let him down as if he's afraid Marlon will disappear again. He keeps scolding. “What were you _thinking!?_ What if something would have happened to you?!”

Something _did_ happen to him. In fact, a lot of somethings happened to him. “I can take care of myself," Marlon grumps.

“No. You _can't_. You're just a kit. You need someone to look out for you.”

Marlon refrains from rolling his eyes. Instead, he lifts his head from where it's rested on Aiden's strong shoulder to look towards the rooftops. He can't smell them from here but he knows they're up there. He counts the chimneys where there seems to be too many of them, then lets go of Aiden with one hand to wave towards the chimney without smoke.

The chimney unfolds, rises, turns into the silhouette of a man who waves back.

Marlon puts his cheek back down on Aiden's shoulder facing away from Aiden to hide his smile. Aiden doesn't get it, but he does. As long as there is a healthy population of packs around, a friendly Packrunner will always have someone to look out for them. Because Packrunners are one. From a lonely Texan who so easily took an O and their adoptive kit in to feed and keep warm, to a wild-at-heart mercenary Captain or a big pack like the Hales - as long as he is in the city he can find an adult who'll help him. They're one.

Now he just has to find a way to remind his own pack of this.

* * *


	9. The Patriarch’s Great Mistake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon the kit comes back home and faces the consequences of his actions.

* * *

Trust grandpa to scent the air then lock his gaze on Marlon’s pocket where he’d put his treasured upper. Marlon swiftly took it out and swallowed it lest he gets it confiscated. At the moment he’d regretted not being able to save it for later. Now, though, now he’s happy he didn’t.

The uppers make you focused and puts you firmly in the here and now. At the club, dancing, his focus had been dancing. Thinking about the future, pack politics, problems, was futile at the time. Now? Now all those things are the ‘here and now’. And now there's no alcohol to muddle up his brain. The individual hugs and scoldings are done and over. Now they’re in the big meeting room. Not the whole pack, but most of the members, adults, who are home are standing along the walls. Marlon's in the middle, Aiden to the left behind him. Nina's in the room too. She might be just a Juvie but when someone told her to leave she went into fight mode. Grandpa stepped in and told her she could stay.

Grandpa Jed stands 7 feet in front of Marlon with his hands loosely behind his back, relaxed and regal. Marlon also has his hands behind his back, like a soldier standing to attention. He meets Jedikiah's gaze squarely.

“So. Marlon. You have a lot of explaining to do,” Jed says with a mild voice. "Let's start with your letter. You made the soldier a promise, freedom for information. Naturally, we will all honour that promise. We would have, I might add, even if you hadn't written that you promised on your pack. A promise is sacred and thus not lightly given. We all know that the gods will prevent an oath breaker from running with their loved ones in the afterlife. If a pack member breaks a promise of great import they could face disbandment from a pack in life as well, to avoid the whole pack being subject to the same dishonour. We all know this. That's why a Packrunner doesn't give promises lightly. It's a great burden to put a geas on your whole pack. You, or any of us, need to think long and hard before we make a decision like that. Especially if the promise is given to a lowly Union grunt.”

Which is exactly why Marlon had phrased the letter as he did. This lecture is superfluous. “He wasn't, though. He's a high ranking officer in a mercenary company. A company that was sent on a search and rescue, alternatively retribution mission to retrieve him. So that could have had a lovely ending if he'd been kept here,” Marlon sasses dryly.

Jed inclines his head in an accepting gesture. “That may as well be. And if you’re right, then you most likely saved us from a disaster. I acknowledge that.”

Marlon hadn’t expected that. It makes him nervous. His grandpa has a gift. He can project calm in a way that doesn’t give away his emotions. He uses this skill when he works and when he’s acting in the capacity of their Patriarch. Marlon had once asked him why he doesn’t feel anything when there’s a crisis and he’d answered that he does, but that he enters a meditative state that keeps feelings at bay. He isn’t lying about it because Aunt Luci with her incredible sense of smell sometimes reacts to grandpa’s emotional shifts even when he is like this. It’s very, very rare that grandpa Jed hides his emotions when dealing with Marlon, though, and that he’s doing so now is pretty scary.

“He was. We met one of his men in the city. They contacted their commander to call off the search and return to base,” Marlon says, needing to be believed. 

“Okay." Jed nods his acceptance of this being the truth. “But tell me, Mar, since you were so adamant that we know you'd promised him freedom, why not take him out the front gate? Our hands were tied to stop it by your promise. And since you'd already made the deal, you could have taken him to us so we could have questioned him directly before the release. I'm not an unreasonable man. He'd been offered food, a bath, and clean clothes the moment he turned from prisoner to guest. Yet you chose differently.”

Marlon swallows. He hadn't thought about that since he knew he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He remains quiet in the pause Jed leaves for him to speak.

When Jed realises Marlon isn’t going to talk he speaks again. “So. Let’s talk about what you did instead. You packed food―”

“You raised me right. I know how to treat an O in Heat,” Marlon interrupts. His palms are sweaty but he doesn’t smell half as nervous as he is. But Jed’s lips quirk upward incrementally as if he’s pleased.

“So the food wasn’t for you?”

“No. Arvid had been starved for days and needed to eat. I brought sandwiches, apples, and honey. Honey is the best thing you can give an O in Heat. Especially if they’re too nauseous to eat. They only need a little to perk them right up between rounds,” Marlon paraphrases Arvid.

There are approving chirps from Michael and Jane both. A few of the other members also seem pleased by this statement. Others smell annoyed or angry still. Marlon wants to look around the room to see which of them are pleased with him but doesn’t.

“That’s true,” Jed confirms. “No other natural resource give as much energy quickly as honey. It’s also something that will help you stabilize after an adrenaline rush, or if someone’s passed out from low blood sugar you can rub it on their gums and it will be taken up by the body despite them being unconscious.” Jed’s tone is friendly and lecturing and he looks briefly around the room showing Marlon isn’t the sole target for that piece of information. Marlon’s always liked that about his grandpa, the way he adds facts and explanations unprompted. Nina usually rolls her eyes about it, saying he’s being patronizing. Marlon doesn’t agree. Jed looks back to Marlon. “I’m happy you’ve learned these things and put that knowledge to use, Mar. But then you stole clothes from Michael.”

“No, I didn’t. Just one day before Clara had taken my stuff. Uncle Dave told me I had to let her have it, because, I quote, ‘ _in a pack, we share_ ’. The obvious conclusion to that is that I too owned Michael’s clothes. Therefore, they were mine to give away,” Marlon says and sticks his chin up. He hears Michael snigger silently in the background.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” Dave protests.

Marlon remembers his and Arvid’s talk when they walked through the city after they crossed the bridge. He remembers what Arvid had told him to do. He stiffens, tilts his chin down, teeths his canines, curls his lips to show his teeth and growls a bone-chilling warning evoking rank while side-eyeing Dave.

There’s a murmur of unrest in the pack. Dave sucks in a breath and stares in shock.

“It seems I’ve missed something really important,” Jed says. “Mar, are you aware of what you’re saying right now?”

“Very. I challenged Dave for rank and he forfeited.”

“I didn’t! _He’s a kit!_ ” Dave protests and gestures at Marlon while looking frantically at Jed. “It doesn’t count. I would have had to hurt him!”

Jed hums. “Kit or not, it definitely counts. And I’d say this takes precedence to our current matter. Would you kindly take care of it so we can continue?”

Arvid had asked Marlon if he’d be ready to fight for rank even if he wasn’t angry, and he is. Flaring, he growls harder, begins to drop full fangs, teeths all his teeth and lets his claws grow, turning towards Dave. He doesn’t growl in a challenge. Why would he? He isn’t the one wanting to shift their current rank (That grandpa Jed acknowledged!) status. Instead, he just intensifies the rank evoking warning.

If a room could be said to hold its breath, this is it.

Dave stares at him in shock, lips parted. He takes one step forward and Marlon shifts into a fighting stance. If Marlon can claw a man’s eye out and spit it back at him, he can do this. If Dave challenges him, he _will_. He can smell his own aggression mounting. 

Dave hesitates, swallows visibly. Seconds of eternity tick by. Then… Dave turns his head away, lowers his gaze and licks his lips with a sudden souring of fear in his scent.

Marlon barely has the time to be surprised before someone else growls a challenge. He turns to see Rosie, an O that has the same rank-level as Dave amongst the Os, flaring, dropping fangs at him. Rosie is seldom at home to interact with Marlon, more often than not out on the battlefield. Marlon has to think fast. Why did he challenge Dave in the first place? Because Dave kept defending Clara when Clara stole from him. Rosie did nothing of the sort.

Marlon drops every sign of hostility to lick his lips in submission.

“Well then. That’s dealt with. Let’s continue,” Jed says smoothly.

Marlon takes up his previous position and for the briefest moment, he thinks he sees appreciation and pride in Jed’s expression. But it’s gone between a heartbeat and the next and might very well be Marlon projecting his own triumphant feeling.

“Like you so often do, you went down into the sub-levels with your… guest,” Jed continues. “Where I know you’ve spent considerable time before. I knew there were tunnels, but I’ll admit that finding they connected with an extended cave system came as a surprise.”

“Since they do connect and nobody’s claimed the caves they belong to us. They’re our territory. When I’ve been down there I was still on our territory. I didn’t leave our territory,” Marlon hastens to reassure.

Jed hums with a narrowing of his eyes. “So you do remember you’re not allowed to leave our territory without an adult pack member. And yet you did.”

“No. That’s not what you said. You said I’m not allowed to leave our territory without an _adult_. Arvid is an adult.”

Somewhere to his side Michael sniggers silently, someone else mumbles something Marlon can’t pick up. Jed looks stiffer than he did a minute ago.

“That’s not how we meant it, and you know it,” Jane says with a scowl.

Marlon turns his head towards her, meets her gaze squarely and says, “Rhetoric is everything.”

That has an effect. Michael bursts out laughing, Luci elbows him to make him stop but she too is sniggering. Old uncle Winston (who Marlon hadn’t even noticed was home until now) grinningly looks at Jed to say ‘Are you sure Mar is Matthew’s and not your own?’ Jane looks outraged saying ‘Oh no you _didn’t_ ,’ under her breath while looking at Marlon, Nina rolls her eyes, and grandpa Jed closes his eyes and bends his neck with compressed lips. This time Marlon’s sure he’s trying to keep himself from smiling. Someone says ‘He’s just like you used to be, Jed.’ But Marlon isn’t sure whom. Someone of the older ones who grew up with Jed most likely. 

It takes a while for the room to still once again. Jed looks back up at Marlon. “See, Mar, I dearly want to punish you for the things you did up to the point where you left. But doing so would do nothing but teach you that the skill of word-bending, a skill so pertinent to running our family business, is useless. I have no doubt that you fully understood we meant a pack member and not a random adult, or that it was wrong taking Michael’s clothes. I am angry at you for your actions but I appreciate your cunning. I especially enjoyed the way you told your sister that you were looking for something stolen when in fact you meant to be the one to steal it. And Jane told me what you said in the kitchen. At no point did you actually lie to her, she just made her own assumptions. I applaud that.”

Marlon narrows his eyes suspiciously, tampering down the glow of pride in his chest.

Again, Jed leaves a pause for Marlon to talk, but Marlon says nothing.

“Why did you leave home, Marlon?” Jed asks.

“I wanted to see the planes, and the bombs fall. You wouldn’t let me watch from here.”

“So you went to the city. How did you cross the barricades at the bridge?” Jed is calm and mild-mannered in his interrogation. His voice is soft and non-threatening. But the scent of anxiety is clear from the other adults in the room.

“Laughingly. Arvid laughed. I didn’t, because it was strange. But we dropped claws and fangs, held out our hands like this, shifted our faces and pelted.” Marlon demonstrates how they held their arms out to their sides as if they were embracing an oncoming fight. “They just parted and licked their lips in submission.”

“Pelted?” Timothy asks.

Marlon drops fangs inside closed lips until the sunburned feeling comes in his skin, then he ‘says yes’. He feels the fur grow on his face. There are a few gasps but not everyone is surprised.

“Are you aware of how dangerous it can be to pelt amongst people? Some are afraid and will not consider us humans when we do, which is why we haven’t taught you how to do it,” Jed says.

“I am. Arvid told me. But it’s my conclusion,” Marlon tries to use grownup speech patterns, “that pelting can be used as an intimidation technique in some cases. And Arvid pelted in the dungeon to keep warm. So I’m glad Arvid taught me.”

“I agree that it’s a valuable skill. We have strong genes for it in our family. And as long as you know to be careful and choose where and when you do it, I approve. We make use of it on the battlefield. Michael and Luci can teach you several ways to make use of the skill since you’ve already learned it on your own.” Jed gestures towards Mike and Luci who nods in acceptance of the assignment.

Marlon tries to tamper down his excitement. He knows that there will be a punishment at the end of this no matter how agreeable his grandpa seems right now. “Thank you.”

“Where did you watch the bombing?” Jed asks.

“From a rooftop on the other side of the bay.”

“At a safe distance?”

“You’re never safe in a city that’s being bombed. To be safe you’d have to go to Fiji or Polynesia. But the view is really bad from there,” Marlon answers, once again paraphrasing Arvid.

Michael sniggers and receives a sharp look from Jed, quickly tampering down his amusement muttering ‘He’s not wrong,’ under his breath.

“And did you have a good view?”

“We did.” Unprompted, he tells them what he remembers. It’s fuzzy. More like describing pictures he’s seen in a book. But he tries. He describes the dark silhouettes against the sky, the first smaller explosions, then how the whole shipyard exploded in fire, the errant missiles shooting away across the water and city, the wave, the houses catching fire, the house next to theirs partially collapsing. 

It’s like somebody put a heavy, wet blanket over the room. Everyone is quiet during Marlon’s description of his experience. He can smell anxiety, sadness, fear, and saline. He looks around when he talks, wants to know who is feeling what. Nina’s face is set in a hard, stoic expression, while Aiden’s eyes are glossy. Aiden always was the softer of his two older siblings. Jane is purring a quiet, soothing purr―a mix between a parent’s and a sibling’s comforting sound. She might very well be trying to soothe everyone in the room. At no point is Marlon interrupted.

“...so I felt it was my duty to watch. To see. Since we knew about what was going to happen and had the ability to help, but did nothing,” Marlon finishes.

“Marlon, there’s nothing we could have done,” Jed says softly.

“Yes, there was. About 20 minutes prior to the bombing we were walking in the outskirts of Hale territory. I flagged a Hale down and told them about the bombing and where it was planned. During those 20 minutes, they had time to warn a number of other packs and evacuate their pack from the buildings at risk. The Bolton’s had time to blow up the Perlino Arc and dose it with water to stop the fire from spreading past that point. Arvid told me about the bombing at our first meeting, I told Michael and Luci who told you. If they could do all that with 20 minutes warning, imagine what they could have done with a day. Or what we could have done, who have contacts in politics and in the army! USS Victoria wasn’t in Newport, she was here, just like Arvid said. She shouldn’t have been. You could have convinced the politicians to make her take to open sea instead. Maybe we could have had fighting planes of our own waiting, shooting down the enemy planes. People in the city wouldn’t have been taken unawares while they slept. We _could_ have done something. But you didn’t.”

The silence that follows is even heavier than the one before. Marlon hopes they’re all ashamed and feeling guilty like he does.

Marlon suddenly remembers the urgency he’d felt about saving Laurent and speaks up again before Jed has a chance to meet the allegations laid at his feet. “Furthermore―” ‘Furthermore’ is a good, grown-up word that makes things sound serious and official, “―we need to shut down the weapons factory on our land immediately. It’s killing people.”

“We’ve had this discussion before, Mar. We had a meeting where we talked it over and came to the conclusion that it was in the best interest of the pack for it to remain for several reasons. One, the rent money. Two, the easy access and quick delivery of weapons. And three, the huge discounts we get when we buy those weapons,” Jed says. A few people around the room nod. “We realise a few people get sick from the waste but our pack isn’t in danger and with the war the gain outweighs the risk and ultimately benefits the whole city.” Jed is talking to him seriously now. Like they’re actually discussing, rather than talking down at him, telling him something. Marlon likes that. It makes him feel like he actually has a chance to sway his grandpa.

“You’re wrong. On several accounts. Not the economic ones. I’ll admit that much,” Marlon says, giving Jed’s argument some credibility to soften him up. “The short-term gain is great. But on everything else you’re wrong.” He turns to look at the rest of the pack. “The chemical they let out in the harbour is called EB50. It was used for chemical warfare before the industry figured out another way to use it. The human body can break it down but does so very slowly. A lot more slowly than it takes the chemical in. It takes the chemical in by drinking contaminated water, or bathing in it, or inhaling the vaporized fumes from a contaminated body of water since EB50 is light enough to follow steam up as it rises. And the body takes it up by eating anything that has stored the chemical in its body even if that animal or plant happens to be immune to its effects. Like fish. This far the EB50 has killed mostly people that were already sick from something else. But it’s making other, perfectly healthy individuals sick too. After a certain point, it will start doing irreparable damage. But that’s not all it does. A member of the Hale pack told me they’ve lost all their kitlings under the age of two, and no O can retain a pregnancy past three months even if they don’t yet smell sick.”

Marlon pauses. It’s like the debate team back in school. Not that he’s on the debate team. He just likes to read up on the subject they’re passionate about and then crush all their arguments during recess. Mostly Arnold Palmer’s arguments because he’s said that all Packrunners are nothing more than dumb animals but he’s the dumb one. “We, our pack, will inhale this chemical every time we visit an area close to the bay,” he continues. “And maybe you’ll say you won’t go to the bay ever again. Maybe you’ll think you’re safe because you don’t live by ground zero? The chemical possibly will stick around in that area. ….But the fish don’t. They’re immune and just store the chemical in their bodies then swim wherever they hecking well like to swim. And how about the water that evaporates? I know how rain works and once those vapours reach the clouds they too move around and gets dropped back down as rain. There isn’t much science about what happens with plants, vegetables and fruit, that feeds of the rainwater. Perhaps they never store up enough poison to be dangerous to us. Perhaps we’re being poisoned more slowly than we break it down and all is well.” He pauses again. “But perhaps not. Perhaps we’re only getting sick more slowly than the people living near ground zero. Every time we eat fish, waterfowl, locally grown produce, fruits and berries from our own orchard, we might be poisoning ourselves slowly. Every time we’re near the coast or get hit by rainwater, we might getting sick. So while the people by ground zero may notice the effects quickly and all be dead within a couple of years, we might think everything’s fine until one day, ten years from now, we smell the sickness on our own for the first time. And by the time you smell it, it might be too late…”

He’s getting to them. He can smell it - anxiety and fear. Worried eyes looking at him. He’s on a roll. The uppers make every thought feel crystal clear in his mind right now. His sole focus.

“As long as this chemical is used in America―” he starts to say but is interrupted by a ruckus by the door. It flies open and Clara comes running inside on her little legs. Marie, the O charged with keeping track of the kits during this hearing, hot on her heels.

Clara lights up when she sees Marlon. “ _Mar!_ ” She comes running and throws herself around his neck. “You’re back! I’ve been so worried. They said you and that scary soldier were gone and they couldn’t find you and I was so afraid you’d be deaded by him and I was never going to see you again and you can play with my doll if you like to and I’m so glad you’re alright!”

Marlon refrains from curling his lip in disgust. He gets an idea and instead hugs Clara back, rubbing his temple in a pretence of affection against her cheek. “I’m fine and the soldier was nice to me. Maybe we should celebrate my return? Eat something special for dinner? How about flounder? Isn’t that your favourite?”

“Yes! I want that!” Clara twists in his grip to look at Dave. “Can we, dad? Please?”

Uncle Dave makes a wounded noise and looks at Jed with sheer terror in his eyes. He’s not the only one. Marlon has never seen so many pack members look and smell terrified. Pale-faced and wide-eyed they all look at Jed.

“I’ll deal with the shutdown of the factory first thing in the morning and start the process of lobbying for a complete prohibition of EB50,” Jed says without any hesitation, sending a sigh of relief through the gathering.

Clara looks at Jane instead. “Can we have flounder tonight?” she insists.

“No, sweetheart. But we can have cake instead,” Jane answers with a tight smile.

Marie takes Clara out of Marlon’s grasp with an apologetic look. “Time to go, Clara. You can talk to Marlon after the meeting.”

Clara whines in protest as she’s being carried out the door. It’s really hard for Marlon to hold back a purr in smug triumph. Somehow he manages, but it’s a close call. He did it. He managed to stop the EB50 pollution. Hopefully, Laurent will be fine now.

Jed speaks as soon as the door is closed again. “Now, Marlon, did this Arvid uphold his promise of giving us intel?”

“He sure did.”

“Tim, take notes,” Jed commands Timothy and gestures for Marlon to talk once Timothy has his notebook and pen out to document it in his quick shorthand.

Marlon talks. He quotes Arvid directly rather than paraphrasing, telling them everything Arvid had told him on that roof. Several times he sees Jed exchange looks with the fighters in the pack, getting discreet nods in return, silent confirmation of information they already have. But other information is by appearance both new and valuable.

“I think this is enough for today,” Jed declares once Marlon’s finished. “We haven’t even touched on the fact that you didn’t return home or the drugs and alcohol you’ve imbibed. That will be addressed at another time.” He blows out air through his nose and runs a hand over his face, then steps up to Marlon and goes down to a knee so they’re face to face, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve accomplished great things while you were gone, Marlon. You’ve saved a lot of lives. And for that, I’m proud of you.”

There’s a warm glow of proud triumph in Marlon’s chest.

“I’m very proud of you,” Jed continues. “But, none of these consequences of your actions were foreseeable. It might very well have ended in disaster. You did something you are never allowed to do. You put a pack member in grave danger.”

“What? No, I didn’t. Who?” Marlon protests, distressed by the unjust accusation.

Jed taps Marlon’s chest. “You. You, Mar. As well as the ones that were sent out to look for you. You didn’t say where you were going and you didn’t come home for days. Some of us were literally worried sick. Both Aiden and Luci could neither sleep nor eat because you were gone.”

“And you, dad,” Luci adds looking at Jed.

Jed inclines his head briefly in acceptance of the statement. “And me,” he admits. “So you see, Mar, I have to punish you despite the lucky outcome. We’re having great trust issues. I want you to learn that you can’t do things like this without consequences. You created a crisis where there were none. So the punishment has to be something that is felt more than a flick on the fingers.”

“I understand.” Marlon knew he’d get punished somehow. Of course, he would. He knew he was doing wrong when he broke Arvid out. He’s certain he can take whatever Jed throws at him. Shake it off. He meets his grandpa’s ice-blue gaze squarely, unafraid.

“Until the trust is restored both ways, you are always to be within sight of at least one other pack member,” Jed says.

“Okay…” It’s awful, but since Jed isn’t specifying what pack member he can be around Aiden. He can put up with Aiden most of the time. And Luci and Michael when they’re at home. And Jane. It’s not so bad. He can weather that.

“One more thing,” Jed says. What he says next sends Marlon’s heart and gut plummeting. It opens up a black hole under Marlon’s feet and sends him free-falling into an abyss. “The privilege of having a room of your own is revoked until further notice.”

Marlon thought he could take whatever Jed threw at him.

He was wrong.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. It's the last we'll see of Marlon as a kit because next time we jump back in time, time has passed and he's a Juvie. :)


	10. Gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the present, Marlon's audience has grown and questions are sparked by his story.  
> It leads to him jumping forward in time to tell them about his Juvie days.

* * *

“So that’s how you got to know Laurent and became such a good dancer. I’ve always presumed you met Laurent through pack negotiations. But tell me, if the chemical was so dangerous once you’d begun to smell sick, how could he still be alive when I’d turned into an adult?” Dick asks.

“Falling in love with swing was just the beginning of my dancing career. It wasn’t just the dancing that got to me, though. It was everything about that world. And once I’d taken a step into it I lived with one foot in that world for years. As for Laurent, I can answer that.”

“What I’d like to know is where Arvid is today and how I can meet him? He sounds awesome!” Dean enthuses, interrupting Marlon.

“Everything about what you just told us is terrible,” Mike says. He and Raff came home while Marlon was talking and had wordlessly climbed up on the bed to join the rest. “I feel sorry for great grandpa. Having a kit run off to the city in the middle of a bomb raid is a nightmare just thinking about it.”

"Pfft. He deserved it," Dean scoffs. “How the hell could he think it was okay to let people die like that for money? And why didn't he hear Arvid out?”

Marlon shakes his head and runs his hands over Dean's thighs. “He definitely didn't deserve the blame I put on him. About Arvid? I didn't know it at the time but the Union tried to sow a lot of disinformation that our army had to sift through. We didn't take Arvid and the others captive to interrogate them, we took them because they surrendered primally and it's next to impossible to kill someone submitting. The odds that one of them was a high ranking officer that wasn't loyal to the Union… well. I wouldn't have believed it either in Jed’s position. Especially since we'd been told that USS Victoria was in Newport by higher-ups in our own ranks which was America trying to spread disinformation of our own. Arvid's claim would look like an apparent lie to someone who believed themselves to be in the know. As for the EB50, we'd been lied to. That meeting I overheard in part? It took place because grandpa was so distressed when he got word people had fallen ill. He'd called a pack meeting because he was torn. He'd contacted the company owner who'd assured him that it was only dangerous to people with serious, pre-existing conditions. And grandpa still didn't feel comfortable making a decision on it without the input of the pack. He didn't have the information that was given to me by Arvid just like I didn't know what he'd been told. And that was a pattern for us. I might have been an intelligent kit but my world was black and white while he saw the whole spectrum of colours. Which is also why I was convinced that the Conservatives were out to get us and he wasn't.”

Dean rolls his hips a couple of times squeezing to lure Marlon's knot to last a bit longer on their second go. Mike's straddling Marlon's thighs behind Dean's back, bracketing Dean and nosing his neck. Sometimes it baffles Lucifer that the world doesn't see Mike for the horndog he is. Their father is here telling them about something he's never told them about before and Mike is trying to sneak in a knot switch when their father's done. Dean probably won't mind. And Marlon smells perfectly content. Luci's laid down on his side supporting his head in his hand beside his father in a mirror image of Dick on Marlon's other side. Raff is spooning Luci, chin rested on Luci's shoulder. This is a perfect storytime just like when they were kits and Marlon would read to them. Despite that, Mike's thinking about sex.

“What I really don't get is why a room was so important to you," Dean says. “The way me an’ Sammy were raised, personal belongings aren't important. You can drop us off anywhere with basically nothing and we'll be happy as can be. I'd understand if you were attached to a knife or a blanket―” There are sniggers all around when Dean mentions blankets. “―but a room?” 

“I really can't answer that," Marlon says. “It wasn't just the room. I was and still am as possessive of anything I own as well as people I have an emotional bond to. I'm afraid that bond doesn't have to be mutual or even confirmed in scent. I decided Arvid was mine the moment I saw him catch that apple. It's not a conscious decision, rather a tightening in my chest. The same thing went for Laurent and several other people I've met in my life.”

"If I may offer a theory?” Dick says. "You grew up in a time of war with those you loved coming and going. Every time they left it could be the last time you saw them. You rarely saw your parents and you had no control over any of this. A room, and physical objects, offer a type of permanency and control you didn't have over anything else.”

“I second that theory,” Raff says, speaking up for the first time since he got home. "And patterns we establish in kithood tend to stay with us when we grow older even if our circumstances change drastically. Just look at Dick. His survival largely depended on him being able to abandon both territory and belongings in a moment's notice. So when the Winchesters offered him to move in he hardly packed a bag before wandering over to them. Most people would fret over leaving an apartment like his and Crowley's in a separation, but he didn't even bat an eyelash.”

Luci huffs. Trust the psychology nerds from HR to solve the puzzle.

“Yeah. We mighta had a home and a territory but dad trained us to be like that,” Dean says. "He'd frequently take us on hunting trips where we couldn't bring anything we couldn't carry on our backs in an easy lope for hours.” He chuckles. "Maybe that's why Sam's so strong? The big nerd always brought a couple of books if he was allowed.”

"That's something I can relate to. I have a great love of books. And back then the Union burned books they disapproved of in areas they occupied. My greatest love was history books, especially written by Packrunners. I understood the importance of point of view bias when it came to historical depictions. But somehow it kept eluding me how different my grandad's point of view was from my own. To me, we shouldn't have seen things as differently as we did. But he had most pieces of a puzzle while I was still working on piecing together a corner…”

* * *

“ _...amicable relationship between the Conservatives and Packrunners living in the Napa County. The packs were in majority but border feuds were few and the tolerance for people who thought differently, high. The Conservatives were mostly followers of Astor Cabot, the famous missionary. They preached monogamy but otherwise were fairly unjudging people. Astor Cabot was famous for his ability to tell stories about Truemates. Tales, that even today hold a romantic allure to Primals and Packrunners to a certain degree. (*Written accounts can be found conserved at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.) The great fires of 1707 destroyed several cities and villages and left the Napa County isolated as the only thriving area in the region for several years. Young wandering Omegas, and adventurous Alphas that wanted to leave to find a new pack had to travel a long way before encountering like-minded with the same living standard they were used to. The drought lasted from 1707 to 1712, making water a valuable asset. That’s when the two largest packs in the area, the Ellis and the Montgomery pack, were offered a, for the time period, incredibly large amount of money to divert the river flowing through their lands to land owned by a large company. The river still ran through their land and it's believed that they thought it wouldn't affect them. They were wrong. When most small packs living around their territory no longer had enough water to tend their farms…_ ”

Marlon grunts when Clara throws her arms around his neck in an attack-hug from behind. “Mar! I’ve been looking all over for you! What are you doing?"

“Reading,” Marlon answers, memorises the page number and closes the book. 

“What are you reading?” Clara asks and climbs up to sit on his shoulders, dangling her legs over his lap. He puts a hand over her legs to prevent her from accidentally damaging the precious book.

“History.”

“Boring,” Clara states.

“Not at all, you monster. I’m reading a history book written by Packrunners. These books are very rare these days. This one’s particularly interesting since it tells what really happened in Napa County at the beginning of the 18th century when it went from being dominated by Packrunners to Conservatives in the span of a mere 20 years without any influx of new people.” Marlon puts the book on his jacket beside him on the grass. It’s a warm day, late spring. He’s cross-legged in the sun, preferring to be outside to read, while Aiden’s sleeping in the hammock nearby. Technically, he could have gotten away the moment Aiden fell asleep but he felt like reading. It’s the third time he’s read the book. He’d written letters to libraries and every old pack in the country he could track down to acquire it and others like it. He now has a collection of 43 books written by Packrunners that he keeps in his grandparents’ wardrobe to protect them from grubby kitty hands that don’t understand how rare and invaluable they are. Most are pack chronicles or copies of pack chronicles, some are personal journals, and a mere few are actual history books. His biggest treasure so far is a box of old letters sent by pack members to each other over the span of a century. He’d received it from a pack down in Oklahoma. ‘Dear Marlon, thank you for writing to me. My name is Andrea Samwell and I regret to inform you that I’m the last survivor of the Samwell pack. The Union has crossed the borders into Oklahoma and their soldiers are everywhere. I’ve heard they burn anything they find written by Packrunners and I despair. I need to flee but don’t want the history of the Samwell pack to be erased when I die. Your letter was a blessing from Toruk. I’m shipping you all the correspondence saved from our first literate members and forward, our chronicle, and two personal journals from my ancestors. It’s my hope that you’ll help to preserve the Samwell pack. If not in the flesh, but in the spirit…’

Marlon sees it as an honourable mission and has taken Andrea’s request very seriously. In irregular intervals, he and uncle Dave will lock themselves into Dave’s room―converted to an office for the task―and work to make machine-written copies of all the letters. Dave’s a quick typist and Marlon’s better at reading handwriting. So Marlon reads aloud and Dave types. The idea is to arrange all the letters chronologically, combine them with the information from the chronicle and then put everything together with the journals to print it as a book. It’s a very emotionally draining work so they can’t work on it continuously. It’s over a hundred years of history seen from first-person view. People falling in love, losing kits and loved ones, fighting wars, droughts, floods, disease. Through the letters, you could see how life changed for people with the modernisation of society, the spread of the Conservative belief system and much more. Some things never changed. Love, whining, gossip and sibling shenanigans. But neither Marlon nor Dave could be objective and after each session they both needed a lot of care, sleeping cuddled together to erase the heartbreak from what they’ve read.

“Buh- _ooo_ -ring,” Clara declares and tips forward to fall onto Marlon’s lap, trusting him to catch her. He does, of course. He still isn’t very fond of her and her clingy attention but things had changed after he’d surpassed uncle Dave in rank. Dave no longer stepped in to shield Clara from Marlon’s anger when she overstepped her bounds. He’d been allowed to chastise her, she’d learned to submit and as a result, his tolerance of her had gone up to what aunt Jane described as ‘endless patience’. “I made a gift for you. Here,” she says and thrusts a bead bracelet at him with a big grin.

“Thank you. That's very kind of you," he answers and holds out a hand so she can put it on him. Both his wrists are covered with bracelets she's made for him, rattling when he moves. 

Back when he was a kit he hadn't believed it when they said she took his things because she adores him. Today he'd have to be a blind fool not to see it. She wants the same clothes as him, always shows him things first, follows him around and yap-yap-yaps about everything. She makes him gifts. Bracelets, necklaces, drawings, clay figurines, anything. He rarely likes them but they're his and should anyone try to take them Clara and he would both throw a tantrum. It makes her proud that he wears them, even if the reason for it isn’t what she thinks.

“Grandpa is looking for you. He said to go get you. He didn't seem happy,” she warns him and adds the ugly bracelet to his collection. “Bella, Portia, and Louis are also looking for you. Can we go play with them?”

Marlon chuckles. Clara sure doesn’t care for seeking out adults that are angry. ‘Grandpa’s mad at you, can we go play with the other kits?’ She’s the opposite of Marlon in this behalf. She doesn’t do anything to intentionally wake the ire of the adults and when she does anger them she turns into the most elusive kit of them all. Marlon will always seek out whoever he’d angered to get his punishment. “No. You kitties have to amuse yourself without me. Where can I find grandpa?”

Clara pouts. “By the wall,” she answers and grumpily rolls off him.

“Alright. I’ll go find him.” Which wall isn’t a question. “You go harass Aiden. He’s slept long enough,” he suggests.

“Okay.” Clara bounces away to heed his suggestion and as Marlon picks up his stuff and walks away he can hear his big brother yelp in surprise and curse while Clara giggles. He smirks to himself. Clara is a coddled kit. Dave lost two kits and his mate in a very short timespan which was the cause of his overprotectiveness of her, his only remaining kit. That has changed a bit since Marlon got rank over him. Not much, but enough. Dave’s only challenged him once, years ago. The fight was fierce and Dave submitted. His uncle had been in a state of shock afterwards. Not by being beaten by a kit entering his Juvies, but by the fierceness Marlon fought with. Marlon fought to keep his rank or die trying. Dave wasn’t willing to let either of them pay a price that high, and thus submitted. The strangest thing had happened in the wake of that fight. Marlon hadn’t liked Dave very much before but afterwards, he’d acquired an affection for the older man as fierce as the fight had been. They’d developed a much better rapport and Marlon was more likely to listen to Dave than other adults. Grandpa Jed said it’s the natural way of rank-bonding. That the state of the bond compels you to take care of anyone below you. Marlon has a more cynical view. That Dave belongs to him now and he takes care of what he owns. It amounts to the same.

* * *

Jed stares at the wall with a tired expression and sighs. “Care to explain yourself?” he says when Marlon comes walking after having stashed his book away. His layered skirts make a swishing noise when he walks. He’s been growing a lot lately. He’s almost of a height with Aiden to Aiden’s great annoyance. 

Marlon stops beside Jed and turns to regard his handiwork with his hands loosely behind his back as if he’s looking at an artwork. “I was angry.” It’s a constant problem. He circles through anger, despair, dead inside and back to anger for no obvious reason. He has a problem restraining his anger when it boils up, sparked from the most mundane things. When he can’t hold himself back he takes it out on things rather than people if he can help it. Or, when he’s in the city, he helps Laurent with his work. Sometimes it gets bloody. 

Jed reaches out to touch a loose-hanging strip of the shredded wallpaper. “And pray tell, what had the wall done to you?”

“Yes, what _do_ prison walls do to their prisoners?” Marlon deadpans sarcastically.

Annoyance lace through Jed’s scent and he presses his lips into a thin line. “This is your home, not a prison. And you come and go as you please no matter what we do so don’t take that tone with me. There’s no reason to destroy the house just because your temper flares.”

“You’d rather I take it out on people?” Marlon snipes and turns his head to glare at his grandpa. Only to recoil in shame and avert his face licking his lips in guilt. “Sorry. I―” He looks back at his grandpa with regret instead. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that. I really didn’t.” The new scarring on Jed’s face and neck is a constant reminder of what happens when he loses control.

Jed softens. “I know you didn’t, Mar. You were having a nightmare. I don’t blame you for what happened. You were deeply asleep.”

Marlon had woken up in dread, the smell of blood following him from his dream to wakefulness. He’ll never shake the pure terror he felt at discovering that he’d torn his grandpa’s handsome face, neck, shoulder and chest with his claws while fighting his nightmare-foes. Jed had been holding him tight to prevent further damage, purring soothingly into his skin smelling of pain and distress. Distress for Marlon’s sake, not for his own. It was sheer luck that nothing vital got damaged. Ever since then, Marlon will wake up in a cold sweat anytime he claws in his sleep before he can inadvertently hurt someone.

To him, the incident was an argument for why he should get a room of his own again. Or, heck, why he should be locked up alone in the dungeon at night. To Jed, it was the opposite. His grandpa thinks he needs people around even more now than before. It would be frustrating except Jed has made sure there’s always some adult close relative at home. Jed himself, aunt Luci or uncle Michael. Marlon's parents haven't been home for two years.

Marlon sighs. “I’ll fix the darn wall. Just get me the wallpaper and the glue and I’ll make it good as new.”

“I never doubted that. I’m mad at you but this isn’t the primary reason.”

Marlon huffs. “You found my stash?”

“It wasn’t very cleverly hidden,” Jed points out dryly.

It wasn’t supposed to be. Tucked away amongst Marlon’s prize belongings at the bottom of his grandpa’s wardrobe. Jed’s hardly noseblind.

“It was if the goal was to prevent the kits from finding it. Don’t want them messing with crap like that,” Marlon counters.

“Why do you keep doing drugs if you’re smart enough to realise they’re dangerous, Mar?”

“Why do you drink alcohol when you don’t want us youngsters to drink?” Marlon counters.

Jed takes a deep breath to gather his patience. “I know you use drugs when you’re with your friends but there’s no reason to bring them into our home. Just because the likeliness of the kits stealing something from my room is very low doesn’t mean it can’t happen. You know how Clara wants to do anything you do.”

“I stand to argue. I’ve got more reason to do drugs here than with my friends. _You’re_ the ones that say I think too much. When I take downers, I don’t think, I’m just content. But the reason I brought them was to finally get some sleep. Two to four hours a night isn’t healthy, grandpa.”

“I’m not saying you think too much. I value your intelligence. I’m saying that maybe you should try to direct your thinking towards less heavy subjects. Maybe then you’d relax, and sleep wouldn’t be such a big issue,” Jed argues.

“I’ll relax when the war is over and the Conservatives aren’t trying to eradicate packrunning anymore,” Marlon counters.

Jed closes his eyes under a frown and lets out the sound between a groan and a sigh of a man who’s had it and doesn’t know why they bothered trying in the first place. He pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment before he opens his eyes to look at Marlon. “Go find Josh to get what you need to repair the wall,” he says tiredly. “I expect it to be done before dinner tonight.” Then he turns and walks away.

“What’s my punishment for the drugs?” Marlon calls after him.

Jed stops and looks at the ceiling without turning around, shoulders slumping in defeat. “I don’t know? Lifelong addiction? Death by overdose? Just don’t let it harm anyone else in the pack,” he waves his hand dismissively and keeps walking.

Maybe it should feel like a victory.

It doesn’t.

* * *

Marlon hears the rustling of leaves and grass long before he catches the scent. His stalker isn’t nearly as good as he is at sneaking in nature. He smirks to himself and keeps walking, whistling as if he’s unaware of his pursuer. He hears the little sounds that give away his stalker getting ready to pounce, and when the running steps come behind his back he spins around roaring to meet his adversary head on, catching him and throwing him with one of those martial art throws that uses the opponent's weight to your advantage. Since Luci and Michael got a green light to train him in how to use his pelt during combat they’ve trained him in all sorts of combat, not just pelting. Aiden has often joined them and Marlon secretly hates it because Aiden’s better than him. Faster, stronger, quicker to learn. 

Laurent roars and rolls right up in a fighting stance. Marlon attacks. They hit, kick, wrestle and roll around on the forest floor, biting each other lightly wherever they can reach. Fighting in skirts while rolling around in bushes and greenery isn’t ideal. His legs get their fair share of small nicks and scrapes to add to the collection of bruises. The scent of their joy of the game stands in stark contrast to the growls and roars. Then, finally, Marlon has Laurent pinned belly to the ground. He holds Laurent’s wrists, kicks his legs apart and humps a couple of time while Laurent stills under him with a giggle. Marlon stills in position and shifts his jaws to grip Laurent’s neck in a careful bite feeling Laurent’s back heave with winded breaths under him.

Laurent sighs in contentment and relaxes fully. They lay still like that for a while until Laurent wistfully says, “I can’t wait until I’ve presented and can try this for real.”

Marlon frowns, lets go of Laurent’s neck and shifts his jaws back. It hurts to do a shift like that but not nearly as much as it did a few years ago. He lets go of Laurent’s wrists to get an arm around Laurent’s midriff to tip them over to their sides in a way that leaves Laurent’s head cushioned by Marlon’s other arm. They stay pressed together in the playful mimicry of a knotting. It’s not uncommon for Juvies to play like this. There’s absolutely nothing sexual about it. It’s simply the enactment of adult bonding behaviour. Marlon likes this part of it, being cuddled together talking after a rough play session. “Why? I think it seems like such a hassle,” Marlon states. “I can’t see anything practical about being locked together for real. What if you’re attacked during the knotting? And it all seems so… sticky.” He rubs his nose over the knob of Laurent’s spine. Supposedly, they both have a dormant gland there that will only activate if they present as Omegas. The gland is supposed to cause immense pleasure if stimulated as well as produce natural painkilling and sedative chemicals. Marlon can see the usefulness of that. Of course, for two Juvies playing it’s nothing more than a gesture of affection.

“I know, I know. But they say it feels so good. I just wish I get to experience it before I die, you know?” Laurent answers dreamily.

Marlon’s good mood instantly sours. He gets an icy knot in the pit of his belly. He doesn’t like to be reminded of Laurent’s condition. Four and a half years ago he’d thought he’d saved Laurent by getting the factory shut down. While it probably saved a lot of lives it did nothing for the people who’d already started to smell sick. People had continued to die. Sometimes it was a gradual process, and sometimes they went from Laurent’s state to sudden deterioration. It had taken a couple of months before the scent of EB50 had disappeared from the water. It’s impossible to tell if the fish still contains the poison. Either way, some of the city-living packs still have to burn new casualties to the chemical. Not only Packrunners. Primals, Progs, and Conservatives living in the bay areas had been equally affected. The good news is that most people that hadn’t started to smell sick before the scent of EB50 finally disappeared, hadn’t gotten sick. Neither had the many refugees coming from inland. It had taken almost two years of bribing the right people for a law to be put in place that completely prohibits the use of EB50 in the industry. But… it’s too late for Laurent.

“Relax, Mar. I’ve made my peace with it, so should you.”

“Never.”

Laurent shuffles around so he's face to face with Marlon and lifts a hand to run his fingers through Marlon's wavy, brown curls that corkscrew at his shoulders. He'd let it grow long to copy Laurent’s hairdo to the pack’s judgemental disappointment. The kits in the pack had all insisted to let their hair grow because he did. The adults might not like it but they don’t prohibit it either. At home, he usually wears it in an orderly ponytail - a compromise between the neat, short-cropped hair favoured by his pack, and the long hair common amongst Marlon’s city friends.

“I’m not even in pain yet. I probably have years still. If I’m lucky I’ll live past my presenting day and maybe even get to find a mate,” Laurent says. “Don’t mourn me before I’m gone. I hate when you get moody.”

Marlon’s never told Laurent what made him sick. He just has to live with the fact that his pack is responsible for the impending death of his best friend. Laurent’s still winded despite their rest. He tires more easily now. He hasn’t grown much since Marlon met him almost five years ago and Marlon’s bypassed him in height with a full inch. Considering how tall Laurent’s parents are it’s possible that the chemical has stunted his growth. He doesn’t _look_ sick. He’s slim but in the healthy, wiry-muscled way. He can climb like a monkey and jumps between roofs like it’s nothing, fearless of tumbling to his death. “What are you talking about? I’m _always_ moody,” Marlon jokes.

“Shut up,” Laurent laughs, grabs some grass to smush onto Marlon’s face and, just like that, they’re back to rolling around, grappling and play fighting, sniggering and giggling. Their friendship is a very playful one when they’re alone. Perhaps because Marlon was just a kit when they met. Their age difference doesn't show as much these days, though. 

It doesn't take long until Marlon has Laurent pinned under him again. This time he's straddling Laurent's chest looking down at his grinning friend. “I wish you'd come visit more often," Laurent says between huffed breaths.

"Me too. But despite what I claim, I don't actually like to disappoint my grandparents.”

“Speaking of, you think your tail will show up?”

"Without a doubt.”

"Aiden?” Laurent sounds grossly hopeful.

“Yes,” Marlon answers with faint disgust. “Hey, why do you never answer my letters?” he asks to change the subject.

Laurent’s cheeks turn peculiarly red. “I, uhm. I can’t read? And I don’t want to go to ask one of our few readers in the pack. It feels too private, like those words you write are meant for only me,” he says apologetically.

“You can’t read?” Marlon’s eyebrows rise in surprise. He can get wanting to keep something that’s yours to yourself, but this is news.

Laurent gets even redder in the face, shaking his head with a vulnerable look in his eyes.

“But you’re not poor. You Hales are high ranking in the area. I thought…”

“We don’t have much money as such. And we start working for the pack as kits. We have a few literate members but they don’t have time to teach us.” Laurent looks too ashamed of this for Marlon’s taste. It happens sometimes. Laurent acting as if there’s shame in not having the skills Marlon and Aiden have, that they’ve acquired solely because they have the money for it. It’s dumb. Laurent has skills they don’t have because he’s been working, learning on the streets.

“I’ll teach you,” Marlon decides. He takes his notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket.

“What? Right now?” Laurent asks with a bemused smile.

"Yes. The sooner you can read and write, the sooner I can start getting replies to my letters.”

"Okay…”

That's how Aiden finds them, cooped together against a fallen tree trunk while Marlon tries to teach Laurent the magic of letters. Unlike with Laurent, Aiden sneaks so quietly in the woods it’s a quick change of direction of the breeze that gives him away first. He’s not quite as silent a stalker as Marlon, but since they’re always in competition about these things he’s not far off. Marlon turns his head to spot Aiden’s hunched form and Aiden straightens up as soon as he’s detected. “Hey. You guys getting high?” Aiden asks as he comes closer.

“No. I’m teaching Laurent how to read.”

“That’s it? Ugh. And here I thought I was going to get a reward for having to kittysit you,” Aiden complains.

“Go hump a cactus,” Marlon retorts testily getting a sneered grimace in response.

“Hi, Aiden,” Laurent says with one of his dumb, moony smiles reserved for Aiden.

_Don’t flare don’t flare don’t flare don’t―_ Marlon tries to project his wish straight into Aiden’s brain.

Aiden looks at Laurent with a cocky smirk and flares. Marlon wants to punch him when Laurent gets that dreamy look on his face. Red eyes are overrated. Marlon directs a glare at his brother. Aiden ignores it. “Hi, Laurent. What’s up?”

“Not much. We’re going to The Sanctuary later. But I have some capsules on me. You want up or down?” Laurent answers, always so stupidly eager to please anytime Aiden directs that red gaze his way. Marlon hates that. Hates that he can be the center of attention only if Aiden isn’t around. Aiden doesn’t even have to do anything. Just flare. That’s it. 

It’s not like Marlon doesn’t like his brother’s company. He does. It’s just that his friends go loopy around Aiden.

Aiden purrs appreciatively. “Depends. Are we going to be here for a while or are you on the move shortly?”

“It’s a nice day. We’ll stay put,” Marlon decides.

Both of them look at him and nod in acceptance. “In that case, down,” Aiden answers Laurent’s question and comes to sit beside them. He thanks Laurent when he gets the capsule then lies down with his head on Marlon’s lap to not-quite nap while the lesson goes on.

A while later Laurent’s focus begins to drift and Marlon decides to call it quits for the day. He puts the notebook away and pets Aiden’s short, blond hair while Laurent leans against his shoulder. “So, Laurent, what’s the word on the street? Any new, interesting rumours?” Marlon asks.

Aiden perks up and struggles to a sitting position, always equally interested in hearing the gossip.

“Oh, yes. There are so many refugees coming from inland. The Union has strengthened their hold of Texas and are spreading up through Oklahoma, New Mexico and beyond. But apparently they're having big problems in Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and California,” Laurent tells them.

"Pack land,” Marlon states.

"Yes. Every pack has gone out to fight with everything they've got. Even the kits. The Union soldiers are many but about half of them are stunted. Partially earblind and noseblind. They don't hear the primal communication so half of them hear the constant rumbling of our long distance chatter and half of them don’t and it’s making them all doubt their sanity. They think we control animals too,” Laurent adds the last part with a chuckle.

“Shifting?” Aiden asks.

“Probably, yeah. But I met one guy from Louisiana who told me the resistance had made a habit out of catching gators and then releasing them into the Union camps at night.”

All three of them snigger.

“But a few people have told me the government has started to conscript people instead of relying on volunteers,” Laurent tells them.

“It was bound to happen,” Marlon states.

Laurent huffs in self-deprecating amusement. “Maybe I’ll get conscripted and die in battle instead?”

Marlon gnashes his teeth in frustration. He hates when Laurent talks about dying.

Laurent smells Marlon’s distress and hastens to change the subject. “Oh, and there’s another rumor that’s up your alley. Several people have told me that the government has started to seize land and buildings.”

“We already knew that. The decision was greenlit 4 months ago. They only seize the property of families where every last member has died so nobody stands to inherit or if the last survivor is younger than 15. It’s called the expropriation and they’re supposed to give the property to people who’ve survived but have had their homes destroyed. It’s a bit shady but the thought’s good,” Marlon says and snaps his fingers at Aiden then gestures with two fingers against his mouth. Aiden rolls his eyes but takes his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and doles a cig each out for the three of them. It’s bullshit. Basically, if you’re too young as the sole survivor you no longer had the right to inherit property. You could still inherit money and valuables but not land and houses.

“Yes, but I heard from someone who’d heard from someone that maybe things aren’t handled properly. There are people who claim there have been people who’d have to leave their homes and flee when the Union soldiers came. Then they’d come back when the Union was pushed back but their home had already been seized by the government. And other rumours say that in some states the government is seizing part of people’s property. Big families that are no longer big can get their holdings suddenly limited. Packs that have shrunk substantially―”

Marlon freezes mid-motion while lighting his cig. He frowns. Aiden bursts out laughing and slaps his shoulder. “Look at that, Laurent. You just threw a bunch of fuel on all his conspiracy theories. You can just see how the wheels in his brain are ticking away. _Ooo_. The big scary Conservatives coming to get us all,” Aiden teases and shoves at Marlon’s shoulder.

Marlon slaps his brother on the pec with a deep frown. “Take a powder. This is serious! Seizing property that belongs to nobody is one thing. But if they're taking pack land of packs that have lost members in the war? Most smaller packs leave an Alpha to care for kits and Juvies. Kits and Juvies can't inherit. What if that Alpha is the sole adult survivor? He could be caring for 5 to 10 minors and the government would still count the pack as only having one member. Think about it.” He finishes lighting the cig and passes the lighter on to Laurent.

“It's only a rumour," Laurent says to placate him. “I haven't met anyone who can confirm it. It's always someone who has heard it from someone who heard it from someone else. There are a lot of preposterous rumours out there and I only mentioned it because it seemed like something you'd be interested in.”

Marlon hums and blows smoke sharply downward. “To whom are they giving the land away?”

“You just said,” Laurent says. “To people who have lost their homes.”

“Yes, but to _whom_?” Marlon persists. “Packrunners? Primals? Conservatives? I want a list with names and designations. This reeks.”

Aiden makes a suffering sound. “You say that about everything. Soon you’ll be saying that this is one of the conspiracies to get rid of all Packrunners. No wonder you can’t sleep.” He hooks an arm around Marlon’s neck and pulls him in for a noogie. Marlon sputters and elbows him in the gut. Aiden lets go with an ‘ _ouff_ ’ and a snigger. 

“I'm glad we're safe either way," Laurent says. “You're too rich to be touched and we don't own any property for them to take.”

"You don't own the house your pack lives in?” Aiden asks.

"No. But we own the owner if you get what I mean?" Laurent answers with a smirk and a pointedly arched eyebrow.

Marlon sniggers but Aiden’s only response is a troubled frown. He’s silent for a beat, then says, “So are we going to The Sanctuary or what?”

Marlon still has the restrictions on him. Be within sight of a pack member at all times until trust has been restored both ways. If Marlon had opted to lie and act, it would have been lifted a long time ago. But he refuses to lie that way. He doesn’t trust his pack for crap. Some of them, yes, to a degree. But not enough for him to consider the condition ‘restored both ways’ to be fulfilled. It never can be since it’s not only about him regaining their trust. Over the years the restrictions have become cursory. He wants to shake his tail? He does so, leaving his assigned watcher to track him down. They want him to be within sight they can darn well be where he is, not the other way around. Aiden is the one who most often has to ‘kittysit’ him simply because he’s the most tolerant of Aiden now that Nina’s presented and gone off to college. Of course, it leads to them fighting a lot but it’s also made them more cooperative with each other. 

Aiden’s developed the same taste for partying as Marlon. He’d never leave home for the purpose by himself, but under the guise of kittysitting Marlon, he’ll gladly come along when Marlon ‘escapes’. Marlon never tells on him. Not about the drugs. The alcohol they can smell, but not the drugs unless they siphon him. They think he’s such a goody-two-shoes. It benefits Marlon. It’s not like he sneaks out that often anyway―just once or trice a month―and when he does, it isn’t just to party. Grandpa Jed is pretty lenient on him and Marlon suspects he knows Aiden’s happily partying away when Marlon does it. Grandma Karen on the other hand, she’s become hard. She thinks Marlon should be punished a lot worse for all his antics. She didn’t use to be that hard. It’s the war that’s done it. She only comes home about once a year these days and stays only for a few days to reconfirm her mating bond to grandpa. Marlon doesn’t have a grandma anymore, he has a general and he hates it.

They’ve lost about 20 members in the war but gained about 40, most of which Marlon’s never met since they’re all ‘orphaned’ from other packs, getting adopted by the Williams at the battlefront. The cynical part of Marlon thinks he’ll never get to meet them because they’ll die without ever having visited the core homestead. The Hales see the same pattern. They’ve lost a lot of core members to the EB50, but with the influx of refugees since the bombings stopped they’ve grown to a lot larger pack than before.

The trio crosses over to the city in a small rowboat. Aiden calls Marlon weak so after a brief tussle, Marlon gets to row to prove he's not. The boat is marked up to high heavens and meticulously hidden. It still gets stolen regularly. It doesn't really matter since they just steal another one when it happens.

The city hasn't been bombed for two years. The richer part of the city has been rebuilt and new buildings shoot skywards with surprising speed despite the war. There are gated communities with private guards forming. Some are just a collection of high rises sharing a small, common park in the middle. Others are basically small villages within the city with all the necessary shops so the inhabitants won't ever have to leave. The guards are licenced to wear firearms as long as they don’t leave these compounds with their guns. Some parts of the bay area of the city, on the other hand, is quickly turning into slums of the worst kind. It used to be only the poorer parts where workers lived but now the poverty had risen to a new level. The segregation between rich and poor had worsened. Unemployment and homelessness have never been so high. People have moved into the ruins of the bombed houses that are in the wrong parts of town. Other parts get haphazardly repaired by the people living there, restoring walls with scavenged or homemade bricks, and planks.

Most refugees that have come to New York are Americans, fleeing the Union working their way up from the occupied states of Texas and South Carolina. But not all. There are groups coming from other countries too. Mostly from Europe.

Marlon quite enjoys moving about in the slums. As much as destitution and starvation are all around, so is revelry and people finding joy despite these things. Here, you can catch a theater show for free. There are street performers of all kinds. They rarely charge in advance but rather go around with a hat to collect payment which may be given as money, food or items. Treater, puppet shows, music, poetry, and storytellers all compete for attention. The funny thing is that many people actually pay something. Had the same performers tried to do that in the richer part of the city they'd starve.

On the plazas and parking lots by the dock homeless people set up camp at night. They lit fires and often they played music and danced, then huddled together and talked.

When Aiden’s coming along they move arrow-straight to The Sanctuary, though. No scampering around and exploring. Aiden isn’t comfortable in these parts despite being the best fighter and best at intimidating a foe by flaring alone. So once they’ve hidden the boat they race each other towards the club. Laurent falls behind and has to stop when they’re almost there. Marlon slows down and goes to check on him. “You alright?” he says and crouches down in front of Laurent who’s bent over with his hands on his thighs, gasping for breath. 

Laurent gives him a big grin, and answers with huffed breaths. “Yeah, yeah. I just. Need to. Catch my breath. Hold on.” He digs out his drugs from his pocket and hands Marlon an upper before taking one himself. It’s with a sinking feeling Marlon realises Laurent’s using the uppers not to feel the fatigue and weakness his sickness is causing him.

He swallows the upper with a “Thanks,” and vows that he’ll make sure Laurent will live to present so he can do the stupid knotting thing to his heart's content. He has an idea forming. He might have to pay hell for it but if that’s what it’ll take… “Hey, Laurent? Meet me by the gates of the university on Thursday at noon.”

“Okay.”

“Promise me you’ll be there. Promise on your pack. It’s really important. And don’t be late.”

Laurent’s grin fades into a bemused smile. “Okay?”

“ _Promise me,_ ” Marlon demands.

“Alright, alright! I promise! I’ll meet you at the university gates on Thursday at noon. Mar, what’s up? Why are you being weird?”

Aiden comes jogging back only catching the last of Laurent’s question. “He’s always weird, you moron. What’s taking you so long?”

Marlon stands up and flashes a shiteating grin at Aiden. “We took off here so you won’t get any,” he teases.

“Hey!” Aiden protests and flares in annoyance. 

“He’s _joking_. Here. I have one for you too,” Laurent assures and gives Marlon a little shove while he hands the upper to Aiden.

Marlon rolls his eyes. “There. You got one. Now go use that stupid flare in the bar to get us free drinks,” he orders and does a shooing motion at his brother. “Scram.”

Aiden ruffles Marlon’s hair and sniggers when Marlon sputters and tries to kick him. Aiden easily evades and takes off at a jog chuckling while Laurent and Marlon follow behind at a more sedate pace.

Later, Laurent dances like he’s got boundless energy, only smelling of exhaustion but not feeling it while high. And maybe Marlon’s a bit more clingy for his attention than usual. Maybe he’s marking him up too often with affectionate temple rubs and perhaps he’s holding on to him too hard when they’ve tired of dancing to instead sit cuddled talking with the rest of their friends on the couches in the back. But maybe Laurent smells Marlon’s nugget of fear―that not even the drugs can chase away―that he came up with his plan too late. Because Laurent’s just as affectionate right back. Or maybe Laurent too is afraid of his oncoming death and welcomes the comfort. Either way, they’ll have to wait until Thursday to find out if Laurent stands a chance to survive until adulthood…

* * *


	11. The view from where you stand...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon puts his plan into action. It'll get him in trouble but he doesn't give a damn. As long as Laurent gets to live past presenting so he can go poke his penis into Os like he wants to, Marlon will consider any price paid worth it.

* * *

Jed and Marlon have made a deal about Marlon’s clothing. Marlon can get any clothes he wants no matter how peacocking, outrageous, or shoddy they might look, as long as he at all times has a fitted, tailor-made suit available. He’s had to switch these suits out (sometimes unused) often during the years since he made the deal due to his growth, but the result is that he owns a good suit with a perfect fit. He needs it now.

Aiden likes to wear suits. He usually goes for a semi-casual style while Marlon always chooses to copy grandpa Jed’s three-piece set. He fixes his hair before he gets dressed. Combs it back while it’s wet, braids it, rolls the braid into a tight knot at the nape of his back and, _voilà_ , he looks as neat as his short-haired relatives. Then it’s on with the suit, stashing his bracelets and necklaces in the back of the wardrobe, and going through his grandpa’s stuff to accessorise. One expensive wristwatch, a pocket watch with the golden chain, tie pin, a brooch, a handkerchief. He ends it by digging through the dirty laundry to find something of his grandpa’s that smells strongly of him. He finds a T-shirt Jed’s worn while knotting aunt Jane. (He’s been doing that a lot more often lately.) It’s perfect, smelling both strongly of sweat and secretion from his neck glands. Marlon rubs it against his neck, face and hands before putting it back. He puts on his shiny, black oxford shoes instead of the military boots he usually favours and then he’s done. He briefly considers if he should wear a coat and hat too but foregoes it because of the warm weather.

He goes into his grandpa’s home office, writes a letter on the typewriter using their company paper, and signs it with grandpa’s fountain ink pen, forging his signature. Despite nobody seeing him his heart beats wildly as he writes ‘ _Jedikiah Williams_ ’ with the flowing script of his grandpa’s handwriting. His palms get sweaty and he knows the scent of his sweat will be a dead giveaway to him having done something he shouldn’t the moment Jed picks up the pen. He folds the letter, puts it in a company envelope and seals it with wax and grandpa’s signet stamp.

He pockets the letter, takes a briefcase and leaves.

“Wait up! Where are you going?”

Marlon curses when he hears Aiden’s voice behind him when he’s walking down the stairs. He turns around to frown at his brother. “Nowhere. Take a powder.”

“Jinkies! Why are you dressed like that? You’re up to no good. I’m coming with,” Aiden decides after giving him a once-over with round eyes.

“No, you’re not.”

“I darn well will. Someone’s supposed to keep an eye on you and I can’t see anyone here which means you’ve shook your tail to do something idiotic.”

Marlon gnashes his teeth in frustration. Aiden can be the most stubborn turd in the world when he sets his mind to it and judging by the set of his jaw and the look in his eyes he’s determined to come along. They can stand here arguing but valuable time is ticking and Marlon has three appointments to keep. “Alright. But you need to change your clothes to your finest outfit and bring your ID. And whatever I do, you can’t question it or argue or I’ll hecking kill you in your sleep. Understood? I’ll wait for five minutes. If you’re not back before that I’m leaving. Now hop to it.”

For a beat, it looks like Aiden’s about to argue, but then he turns and runs back up the stairs. Marlon waits impatiently, looking at his watch. He’s jittery and nervous. If someone else discovers them there’s going to be even bigger problems than he’s already getting himself into because if they won’t let him go he’ll have to fight them. He’ll do it too. 

He’s hoping Aiden won’t make it but he comes running with 32 seconds to spare. Marlon turns and starts walking the moment he sees Aiden. Aiden is wearing about the same as Marlon except light grey instead of dark grey pin-striped, plus he’s opted for a hat. “How are we supposed to cross the bridge dressed like this? We’ll be targeted for sure and someone stole the boat yesterday,” Aiden complains as soon as he catches up to Marlon.

“We’re taking a car.”

“ _A car?!_ Are you mad? Grandpa’s going to be so furi― Alright, but I’m driving.”

Aiden’s good like that. He knows when Marlon can’t be convinced to change his mind. 

They're lucky. Even a car can be waylaid at the bridge but they drive over it at the same time as two police vehicles and can tail one of them almost all the way to the destination. Aiden keeps pestering Marlon about their destination but eventually gives up and resorts to only taking directions while giving Marlon spiteful side-eyed looks. That’s fine. Marlon allows it as long as Aiden doesn’t cause him any problems.

They park outside of a bank. Aiden gets out of the car and eyes both the bank and Marlon dubiously. “Seriously, Mar, exactly _what_ are we doing? I’ve got a bad feeling about this. If we get caught―”

“Nobody’s forcing you to be here. You can’t play it cool? Hecking scram,” Marlon shuts him up and turns to go into the bank with as much dignity and decisiveness as he can muster. Aiden catches up and falls into step beside him. They walk up to the counter and Marlon smiles at the Omega working there. “Hi. I’m here to make a withdrawal,” he says.

“Certainly, Sir. ID and account number, please?”

Marlon takes the letter he wrote out of his pocket, handing it over to her along with his ID. A discreet nudge gets Aiden to hand over his ID too.

The bank teller looks at their IDs, then opens the letter. She reads the letter and gets a troubled frown on her face. She looks up to meet Marlon’s friendly gaze. Marlon notes the small pendant of the One god’s star hanging around his neck. So he’s dealing with a Conservative. “One moment, Sirs,” she says and goes to the back to rummage in a file cabinet. Marlon should be sweating buckets but he’s calmer than he’s ever been. Aiden shifts beside him but he doesn’t smell too jittery. She finds a dossier and briefly reads through it, puts it back and returns. “I’m sorry, Sir, the account was registered by Jedikiah Williams.”

“That’s correct. The account belongs to us, the Williams pack. Grandpa is our Patriarch and he opened the account.”

The bank teller is starting to smell faintly distressed. “Yes, Sir, but according to a new law that came into effect two weeks ago only the person or people officially registered as the owner of an account can withdraw money from it. You can still have joint accounts, of course, but you’ll have to come down here with the account owner to be registered as co-owners,” She looks apologetic and a little nervous.

“I’m sure we’re already listed in the dossier you just checked,” Aiden says. He’s starting to smell of distress along with the bank teller. Not Marlon. He should. _Oh_ , he should. But the only thing he’s feeling is startlement and anger. Startlement at the new law. And anger rising like bile inside of him because to him the reason for it is clear as a bell.

“Yes, Sir,” the bank teller answers and nods uncomfortably. “You’re listed as family. But not as co-owners as per the new law. I’m terribly sorry. I’m not allowed to hand out the money.”

“ _Our_ money,” Aiden corrects with a scowl.

Marlon raises a hand to touch his brother to calm him down. As much as he’d like to rip someone apart right now, it’s not the bank teller who is responsible for this. On the contrary, she is their ally whether she wants to be or not. “Miss, we’re not the ones making this withdrawal, Jedikiah is. Hence, the letter. We are only here because he sent us. Our grandfather is a very busy man and he’ll be in meetings all day.” He keeps up his friendliness. Ranting and raving won’t get them anywhere. 

“I understand that, Sir. But I could get fired if I break the law and the company rules.” Oh, she’s squirming now. Distress mounting with every heartbeat, caught between a rock and a hard place. Marlon gives her an understanding smile and rumbles a Patriarch’s soothing all-is-well. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Aiden start at that but at the same time, he feels his brother relax a notch. Marlon wouldn’t have purred like this if the teller had been a Prog but Conservatives are susceptible to primal communication, they just keep primal behaviour to a minimum in public. 

The bank teller looks at Marlon as if he’s going to solve all her problems. It’s not what he plans to do. He plans to walk out of this bank with the money he came to get. So he’s planning to push the rock even closer to the hard place. “I certainly wouldn’t want that, miss. Naturally, we want to adhere both to the law and the bank rules as well as ensure we can access our money. But I’m afraid there must have been some sort of postal failure because we haven’t been notified or grandpa would promptly have brought us all here to be listed. Granted, it might have taken us two weeks to get all our pack members back from the war front.” He looks around briefly. “Are you sure this office can hold 69 customers at one time? Not that it matters. We would have managed. And it seems the notification of this new law haven’t reached the other packs that are customers of the bank either or you would have been very busy right now with all the Packrunning soldiers making it back from the front line to be registered.” He does a dismissive gesture.

The bank teller has an administrative nightmare playing in her brain so vividly Marlon can practically see it through her eyes. Then, it registers for her what it would mean if a large part of the troops holding the Union back suddenly packed up and headed home to go to the bank and another kind of dread seeps into that reel, causing her to smell of fear. It’s known that a Packrunner listens to the orders of their Main and Patriarch before anything else.

“Oh well. I’m sure that wasn’t your responsibility. But could you at least do us a favour and make three phone calls for us since you’re causing us this unforeseen problem?” Marlon adds before she can answer him.

“Certainly,” she answers.

“Great. Could you ring Mayor Harrington and tell him he won’t get his campaign contribution since we can’t get our money? And tell him that means the Tarwick deal is off because of it. Then ring our grandfather and tell him our funds are frozen because of a law we weren’t informed of. Then lastly, ring the Bank of America to prepare them for a very large transfer when we close our account here and open it with them instead.”

The poor woman is doing her very best not to look like someone about to be fired, executed, and dumped in a ditch for losing their biggest customer. Figuratively. “As you wish, Sir. But you understand that they are under the same restrictive laws as us?”

“Of course. But they haven’t made the mistake to fail to inform us of a new law preventing us from accessing our funds. It’s going to make my grandpa mad. It’s possible they’ve made the same mistake towards their customers but he won’t care about that. He’ll only care about the disruption of our own business. No, no, don’t look like that. I know it’s not your fault. It’s not your mistake. I’m terribly sorry to ruin your day like this. I’ll be getting my share of the ire from grandpa for failing to get the money for the mayor too,” Marlon cajoles with as much sympathy he can fake, upping the volume of his soothing rumble. “Look at the bright side. There won’t be as much work to stress you with 67% of the bank’s liquid assets gone.” He chuckles af if he’s apologetic and making a deprecating joke to lift the mood. He’s not. “Just. Just make the calls, please.”

She’s a professional. She’s keeping it together on the outside. Barely. She doesn’t even answer him. Instead, she slowly rises from her chair to go to the phone on the counter behind the glass. She lifts the handle and raises it towards her ear but pauses with the defeated expression of someone who’s about to order their own death sentence. Her fault or not, she’ll be marked as someone losing valuable customers and causing trouble. It’ll be hard for her to find a new job in the financial sector.

Marlon leans on the counter to look at her. “What’s your name?” he asks.

She turns her head to look at him. He knows that look. Dead inside. He’s having it himself all too often. “Catherine.”

“Catherine. That’s a pretty name. Tell me, Catherine, is it really necessary to uphold a law that requires action from the customer if the customer wasn’t previously aware of it? Couldn’t we just… get our withdrawal along with a paper with the information we’d missed? In that case, I think grandpa could be convinced to stay with your bank. Would they really blame you if you did that?”

* * *

When they’re walking out from the bank Marlon’s briefcase is stacked with money. 

“Jinkies! Hecking jinkies!” Aiden says, eyes wide with shock. “They were really going to prohibit us from getting our money!”

“That’s not all they’ll do. She’ll tell her boss of this encounter, he’ll tell his boss and it’ll go all the way up to whoever pushed for this law. We will be getting a paper sent home but with an addition of restrictions to how many can be listed as co-owners of an account. Just you wait,” Marlon says and gets in the car. When Aiden gets in behind the wheel Marlon tells him to drive to the university.

“You think so? Then we’d have to get personal accounts for every one of us. Oh heck, this is―!” Aiden can’t even finish the sentence.

“Personal accounts? That’s what you’re worried about? This will affect us least of all. They can restrict how many can co-own an account, but not a company. All we’d have to do is list all of us as owners of our company and set aside a company account for us to draw from. I don’t care about that. But look at the bigger picture. If the rumours Laurent told us about are true? Imagine a pack with only one surviving Alpha and a bunch of kits. The kits can’t inherit and the Alpha wasn’t listed as the owner of the pack’s money. What happens with the money then? That’s what I’m wondering about. They’re stripping us of everything we own. I’m telling you, this is part of a bigger scheme. Now hecking drive, we’re on a time crunch.”

Normally his big brother would give him crap about conspiracy theories, but not this time. Now he’s too shocked. He doesn’t even ask what the money’s for.

They’re early. Laurent’s already waiting by the gate of the university when they arrive, looking vastly uncomfortable and out of place in this part of the city. He keeps pulling at his sleeves to hide the broad leather cuffs most slum dwellers wear to hide if they’ve got valuables or not. He perks up when they stop the car and get out. “Woah. You’re coming by car? Darn, she’s a beauty,” he marvels.

Marlon grins. “Well, hop in, we’ve got an appointment to keep,” he says.

The same way the bank teller’s life had gone out of her eyes, Laurent’s eyes light up with jubilant wonder. “I get to ride in it?”

“No, you’re walking, dummy,” Marlon teases. “Of course, you get to ride in it.”

"That's so fab!" Laurent enthuses and comes to stroke the car hood reverently.

“You never ridden in a car before?” Aiden asks and flares.

For once not even red eyes are enough to distract Laurent from his object of admiration Marlon notes with great contentment. “Never," Laurent agrees.

“In that case," Marlon starts to say.

He and Aiden finish the sentence at the same time with identical smiles.

“You're riding up front."  
“You're riding up front."

Laurent looks at the two of them and laughs. "Exceptional!” 

Aiden goes around the car to open the door for Laurent. Naturally, when Laurent is on his way to get in, standing right beside Aiden, Aiden flares brighter. Laurent pauses to look up at Aiden with that dopey smile he reserves for Aiden alone. Marlon resents them both for it. “You look good all snazzed up. Both of you," Laurent says while only looking at Aiden. "Where are we going that requires that type of finery?"

“Ask Mar. He's the Mastermind.”

"It's a surprise. Now get in the car," Marlon demands.

Laurent gives Aiden one more stupid smile and gets in. Marlon is fuming, narrowing his eyes at his brother. Aiden’s friendly smile turns into a mean, shiteating grin when he looks at Marlon, then he flares brighter with one eye and fades the other to low luminosity in some kind of wink gesture. It’s insanely hard to do. The eyes are wired to keep the same intensity on both eyes while flaring but Aiden can switch up the glow of his left eye easily. Marlon _can_ do it too. In about 1 attempt out of a 100 in front of a mirror. He thinks it’s impossible to flare only one eye if not even Aiden can do that. Either way, it’s Aiden’s way of telling him he knows _exactly_ how Marlon feels about him flaring for Marlon’s friends.

Marlon wants to break his nose.

Again.

(That had cost Marlon two broken ribs but, _darn_ it had been so satisfying seeing Aiden’s smug face covered in blood to match those stupid red eyes.)

Aiden slinks into the car before Marlon can reach him to give him a kick.

Once they’re all in the car with Marlon in the back he proceeds to give directions until Aiden catches on what their destination is.

“I’ve never been in these parts of the city,” Laurent remarks and peers curiously out of the window.

“Then it’s about time,” Marlon answers meeting his brother’s gaze through the rearview mirror he can see Aiden has a lot of things he wants to say and ask that he holds back because it’s for Marlon’s ears only.

They park outside of a big, white building and get out. “Do you remember anything from our reading lesson? Can you read what the sign says?” Marlon asks Laurent.

Laurent peers up at the big sign over the wide entrance. “Huh-O-ssss-pee-phh-ee-tee-tuh…” Laurent sounds out, first saying some letters like they’re named then sounding them out but trails off when he understands what he’s reading to turn his head to stare wide-eyed and slackjawed at Marlon. He’s not slow-witted. Someone in their pack should have taken the time to sit down with him and the other youngsters in the pack to teach him to read long ago. “Hospital? You’re taking me to the hospital?”

“Mhm. We’ve got an appointment in a couple of minutes. Come on. Don’t argue,” Marlon says and grabs Laurent by the sleeve to pull him along.

“But―”

“Seriously,” Aiden says and comes up to walk beside them, “don’t argue. When he’s like this it’s like trying to argue with an oncoming train. No matter what you say it’ll run you over.”

“You’re the one to talk,” Marlon protests. “There’s literally no one more bullheaded than you.”

They keep bickering about who is the most stubborn of them until they enter the hospital. Laurent is quiet, smelling of fear and anxiety. Marlon ignores it except for shifting to grip Laurent's wrist firmly so he won't bolt. They walk up to the counter and the nurse looks up from whatever she's doing. Marlon speaks up before he has a chance. “Hi. My name is Marlon Williams. We have a booked appointment to meet with doctor Jenkins at 12:30.”

The nurse looks in a ledger and makes a note. “That's correct. You can go down the corridor and to the left then sit down in the waiting room. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

"I'm not the patient, I'm just paying for it. I trust that won't be a problem?”

"Of course not, Sir. Is it the first time the patient visits us? In that case, would you fill out this form while you wait?”

Marlon nods and accepts the form and a pen then tows Laurent away with Aiden sauntering after them. Laurent smells distraught. “Mar," he hisses, “I can't pay you back."

“You're not supposed to. Here. Sit. I'm filling in the form for you. Just answer the questions…”

Laurent's knee keeps jumping while he sits. Aiden sits beside them looking bored but starts purring soothingly when Laurent's stress begins to mount. That should have been Marlon's job but despite smelling calm, he's too nervous to soothe anyone else. Maybe Aiden with his better sense of smell picks up on Marlon's nerves too? His purring calms Marlon slightly until Aiden turns his head to look at Laurent and says “Relax. Maybe the doctor can't do anything and you'll die before you even have to start worrying about repaying any favours.”

Laurent blinks in surprise and actually _does_ relax a notch. Marlon, not so much. He scowls. “Take a powder! I don't want to hear that stupid attitude. You going to talk like that you can wait in the car.”

Aiden sniggers and sticks his tongue out at Marlon but any further bickering is cut short by the doctor showing up. Introductions are made and they're shown into an examination room. Aiden sits on a chair in the back and reads a newspaper he found in the waiting room, while Laurent and Marlon sit side by side opposite of the doctor by her desk. Doctor Jenkins is an Omega which is a bit unusual. Alphas are those who most commonly choose caretaker jobs. Although, surgeons are equally often Alphas as Omegas. Nurses are almost exclusively Alphas.

Marlon makes note of her little pin of the One god's star on her white coat. “So. How can I help?" she asks.

Laurent throws an uncertain look at Marlon before he answers her. “Um. I'm sick. A while back people around where I live started getting sick and die for no apparent reason. We don't know why. It's not any sickness we've heard of or smelled before. People stopped getting sick a couple of months after the great fire so we think that maybe there was something in the buildings that burned down. I'm, I'm fine really. I just tire more easily these days.”

"He got sick five years ago. He lives in the bay area in old town,” Marlon adds. If she's a good doctor he thinks that should tell her exactly what she is dealing with. "Can you fix him?" Beside him, Laurent shifts uncomfortably.

Doctor Jenkins gives Marlon a sharp look. “Forgive me for asking, but do you perchance belong to the Long Island Williams pack, Mr Williams?”

"Yes.”

The doctor nods to herself. "I thought so." She looks back at Marlon. “Well, Mr Williams, for reasons I'm sure you understand, we don't see many cases like Mr Hale here at the hospital. And I can't tell you what I can do to help him until I've conducted a thorough examination and run some tests. Even if Mr Hale's case appears to be clear as a bell we can't rule out other possibilities. It would be a tragedy to jump to conclusions and miss other, treatable ailments that give the same symptoms just because we assume. And even if it is what we believe it is I need to establish how far gone Mr Hale is before I can tell you what I can do to help him.”

"What _we_ believe?” Laurent asks in bemusement looks at Marlon.

“Yes," doctor Jenkins says. “Your friend most certainly has an idea of what is wrong with you. The factory that lay close to the city a few years ago polluted the water in the bay area with a chemical called EB50. The moment the Williams pack found out what consequences that had to the population they promptly got the factory shut down and started lobbying for a nationwide prohibition against the use of EB50. It's something we within the medical profession have been trying to get for years. But, alas, power lies where the money is and without the Williams pack and the Talons in California people would still be dying needlessly.”

Laurent's head snaps towards Marlon. "You knew? All this time you knew and didn't tell me? _Why?_ ”

Marlon's mouth opens and closes but nothing comes out.

“He blames himself," Aiden drones without looking up from his paper. “We didn’t own the factory but it was built on our land and we made good money off it.”

“Yes, but if you shut it down as soon as you found out no blame can be put on you,” Laurent states.

“We didn’t.”  
“We didn’t.”

Marlon and Aiden say at the same time. Aiden with a disinterested tone of voice and Marlon with a shameful. Aiden finally looks up and goes on. “When we found out there were people getting sick by the harbour we contacted the owner of the factory and inquired about it. According to them there was only risk to those who already had severe health issues and it was completely safe for everyone else. We deemed the profit for the lease as well as the benefits of what was made there outweigh the risks. It was our firm belief that the factory benefitted the whole city more when it was in use and that the loss of a few, already severely ill people were worth it in comparison. Then Marlon made his excursion to the city, took one whiff of you and came back with a single-minded goal to shut the factory down no matter the cost to himself or our pack.”

“We all made that decision,” Marlon says decisively.

Aiden scoffs. “Sure. We _all_ made that decision the same way Laurent made the decision to go to the doctor today.”

“Hey, you _can_ wait in the car, you know? Nobody’s asking you to be here,” Marlon snipes.

Aiden sniggers and returns to his paper. Pointedly _not_ leaving.

Doctor Jenkins smells faintly of anger and is a bit tight around the mouth when she speaks. “Gentlemen. If I may implore, why would you think kitchen appliances were worth risking _anyone’s_ lives over?”

“The factory made weapons,” Marlon answers promptly. “We bought them exceedingly cheap and shipped them off to the fronts to keep the Union at bay. I was just a kit when this went down so I didn’t see, _at all_ , how it would be worth anyone dying in our city just to get cheap weapons. But today, I get why we made that decision when we thought it was just people already on the brink of death that were at risk. Especially with all accounts of the atrocities coming out of Texas since they were occupied.”

“Oh. Well, that certainly changes things. I was very confused as to why the factory was attacked and raided a few days after production had stopped,” doctor Jenkins says, the anger in her scent fading.

“The factory _what_?” Marlon asks. This is news to him. To Aiden too judging by how he lowers his newspaper to look at the doctor with interest.

“I was on call when it happened. We treated several badly wounded guards working at the factory. I thought there were a lot more guards than kitchen appliances warranted but I get it now.”

“Why hasn’t this been in the news? I’ve never heard of this,” Aiden says.

The doctor sighs. “Well, there was some government official here that made sure we’d keep from talking. I’m sure they didn’t want it known it was a weapons factory which might have gotten out with journalists digging into it.”

“Who were the attackers?” Aiden asks.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “But from what I gathered they were an elite force of some kind and the guards were not prepared to defend against that.”

Marlon has a niggling feeling it has to do with him inadvertently telling Arvid about the factory and rushes to change the subject. “It doesn’t matter. Can you fix Laurent or not?”

Laurent’s been following the conversation quietly looking shaken. Marlon briefly wonders if Laurent will end their friendship for not telling him all this but decides it doesn’t matter as long as he gets well.

“Very well,” the doctor says and directs herself to Laurent. “I’m going to do a physical examination of you and then take blood samples and secretion samples to send to the lab. Have you experienced any joint pain or pain that feels like it’s coming from the bone?”

Laurent snaps back to focus and shakes his head. “No. No pain. Just fatigue. ...And, uh, some dizzy spells and blurry sight.”

“He gets a lot more easily winded now than a few months ago,” Marlon adds.

“Okay. Are you taking any medications or remedies prescribed by healers in your area?”

Laurent shakes his head again. “No.”

“He takes uppers not to feel his fatigue,” Marlon points out.

Laurent gives him a sharp look. 

“What? You do. And you got to be honest with doctors. Medicine is chemistry and so are drugs and I may not know much chemistry but I know different substances can cancel each other out. Don’t worry, doctors aren’t allowed to tell anybody but they need to know,” Marlon defends himself.

“That’s right, Mr Hale,” the doctor says reassuringly. “I’m not here to cast judgement or to tell authorities. I’m here to help any way I can. The more I know about what your body is experiencing the more accurate will my diagnosis be.”

“Okay…” 

The doctor comes around to start her exam. Laurent follows any instructions given to him. The doctor looks at how his pupils react on light, looks into his ears and mouth, listen to his heart and breathing, pokes and prods. “What’s your designation?” she asks.

Marlon’s instantly suspicious. “Why do you want to know that? I’ve never been asked my designation when I’m at the hospital.”

The doctor gives him a flat look. “That’s because we already know, Mr Williams. I’m about to check on his morph cells and it would be foolish to ask a Progressive to flare, teeth, or drop fangs. Morph cells can go dormant or semi-dormant, especially if they’re not used as a kit. A simple teething would cause a Progressive tremendous pain and tell me nothing about any changes to the body caused by other factors.”

“Oh. In that case, go on,” Marlon says with a little gesture, getting another flat look. The doctor might be tired of his overbearing helpfulness but he doesn't care. This is important.

“I’m a Packrunner,” Laurent answers. A series of commands follow, he gets to flare both with high luminosity and low, quickly and slowly, teeth canines and all his teeth, do a half drop of his fangs and answer a bunch of questions about his abilities. The doctor fetches a nurse to take the samples needed then they get to wait in the waiting room again for thirty minutes while the doctor looks at the samples. Marlon knows from experience that they’ll get some results in a few days but some will be ready quickly. They’re not talking in the waiting room. Laurent sits with his hands pressed between his knees lost in his own head smelling faintly distressed, Marlon’s pacing, and Aiden’s purring soothingly at them both while reading some magazine.

They’re called back in and take their previous seating arrangement.

“So,” doctor Jenkins starts, “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is you’re too far gone to reverse the effects of the EB50 poisoning completely. The good news is that with the right medication we can reverse some of it and prolong your life expectancy considerably.”

“Will he live long enough to present so he can try out the whole knotting business?” Marlon asks.

Doctor Jenkins chuckles and gives him an amused look. “I see somebody has priorities,” she says dryly.

“That’s what he wants. He wants to experience how the whole penis poking thing feels like and perhaps even get mated.” Marlon looks at Laurent. “That’s what you said, right?”

Laurent opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Instead, he nods. Then he looks back at the doctor. “How long will I live?”

She smiles at him. “It’s impossible for me to say, and I won’t know if there are any hidden complications until I get the more thorough test results back in a few days. I can’t make any promises. But, with a little luck, if you take the medicines as I prescribe, you might very well live long enough to see your future kits present and get mated.”

There’s a tension that leaves Laurent at that. A tension that’s always been present so Marlon can’t remember ever seeing him without it. Laurent’s eyes light up with careful hope, a hesitant joy that makes Marlon chirp in delight. Consequences be damned, as long as his friend gets to live, Marlon’s happy.

* * *

“ ** _Marlon!_** ”

Jed's roar echoes through the home and makes everyone at the dinner table cower and lick their lips, sending surreptitious glances at Marlon. Marlon puts down his utensils and gets up from the table with as much dignity he can muster and leaves the room to find Jed. His mouth is dry and his heart hammering when he enters Jed’s office.

Jed is fuming, red in the face and eyes like red spotlights where he stands behind his desk bent forward leaning his hands on the wooden surface. Marlon closes the door gently and goes to stand straight-backed in the middle of the room. “You called?”

“You’re darn right, I did! You forged my signature! What is it this time? One of your street-running friends convinced you it would be a good idea to buy drugs in bulk and make a killing selling it?” Jed growls. “In that case, I don’t want you seeing them ever again! That’s breaking the law and if we’re going to break the law we have to be smart about it! Aiden was with you. Did you talk him into it too?”

“Aiden has nothing to do with it. Don’t put any blame on him. He refused to let me out of sight but if he’d tried to stop me I would have knocked him out and left him somewhere when he turned his back.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second! I know he doesn’t get up to crap on his own. It’s you! It’s always you! And taking a car across the bridge without any armed guards?! By the grace of Athena, what _the hell_ were you thinking?!”

Marlon swallows dryly but doesn’t answer.

“What the hell did you need the money for?!” Jed demands coming around the desk to square up with him. 

“Doctor,” Marlon gets out. He should be licking his lips and submitting. He isn’t because he stands fast by what he did. But he does shrink in on himself in face of his grandpa’s intimidating rage. Up close like this, he has to fight hard to not sneeze from the sharpness of the spiky scent.

“A doctor, huh? Are you sick?” Jed presses his lips to a thin line, roughly swipes his fingers through the thin coating of secretion on Marlon’s throat, sticks his fingers in his mouth and siphons twice before Marlon has a chance to answer. It’s jarring. It isn’t done. Siphoning someone underage is something you just don’t do and counts as sexual assault. If you do siphon a kit or Juvie you only siphon the air around them, you don’t siphon their secretion directly. Not that Marlon feels in any way disturbed or molested by this, just shocked at the level of rage his grandpa needs to be feeling to reach the point where he doesn’t care. “Nope. Fit as a fiddle,” Jed answers his own question tightly. “Is this one of these sketchy body modification surgeries that the Progs have started doing? Are you going under the knife?”

“No!”

“ _Then what the hell did you need the money for?!_ ” Jed roars. “And while we’re at it, let’s talk about your grades since they were sent to me today. Here I was, thinking you’d be a history major in college. But a C-, Mar? Really? And a cursed F in P.E? How the hell did that happen?! You and Aiden both rival your father as the most physically active youngsters I’ve ever seen in our pack. You jump, run, fight, row, climb, ride, and play sports and you get an F in P.E?? It doesn’t make sense! How can someone as smart as you be such a turdhead? Explain yourself, Mar!”

“My grades have come? C-can I see them?” Marlon asks hesitantly. Now’s not the time to make demands but he sure as heck doesn’t deserve a C- in history. He’d been expecting an A+.

Jed widens his eyes in frustration and strides to his desk to fetch the grades, comes back, hands them to Marlon and crosses his arms in front of his chest standing too close with his lips pressed to a thin line of disapproval. It’s been deemed safe for them to go back to school after the bombings stopped but only with an armed guard of either soldiers back home from the war or licensed security guards escorting their car over the bridge. Marlon stares at his grades. English A+, Mathematics B, Algebra A, Geometry B, Biology B-, Physics A-, Chemistry B, Geography A+, History C-, Religion A, Citizenship A+, Physical Education F, Business Studies A+, Home Economics A, Art C, and Music B. Marlon likes to pretend he’s smart when it comes to everything which isn’t remotely true. He’d been a straight-A student back before they were taken out of school to be homeschooled and his grades had never really recovered since then. It’s more to do with how some subjects having gotten a great deal harder since he was a kit. Getting a B- in biology for an instance is a positive surprise. The chunks he’s missing often make themselves reminded. Technically, he could sit down and read through all the biology books they were supposed to work with from first grade and upward to make sure he filled in the blanks. But that would mean taking precious time off that could be used for writing letters to librarians, old packs and publishers, reading his treasured books, or slink out to meet friends. And biology is just so boring. The only parts of biology he has any interest in whatsoever is behaviour and bonding. The rest bores him to a degree that he’s actually fallen asleep during some lessons.

Math he’s fairly good at. Aiden is a numbers guy. He gets A+ in anything related to math. Marlon isn’t that good at it. He’s good at any math that you have to figure out hidden elements by using letters and symbols to get the answer or the type of math needed to keep track of a budget and money, but math that relates to finding out things about physical objects is much harder. Physics was always Nina’s department. She’s in college now having presented before Aiden despite Aiden being older than her. She’s aiming to become a chemistry major. But no Juvie in the pack (or in his class) has anything on Marlon when it comes to things relating to ethnology or sociology which includes history and, despite it being a physics subject, geography. Therefore Marlon now stares uncomprehendingly at the C- minus in history. “But why?” he asks out loud. “I did great at the finals. I’m sure of it. I even corrected some things they’ve gotten wrong in the books when I answered the questions.”

Jed lets out a pained laugh. “Of course you did. Naturally. Which is why they think you’re full of crap and that C is no longer of any consequences. If you decide you want an A I can make them allow you to retake the test and give the answers you can find in their books. It’s up to you if you want to be right or if you want good grades.”

Understanding dawns on Marlon. Toxic anger wells up inside of him. The history taught in high-school is incomplete at best, fabrications to make Conservatives look good at worst.

“I get your anger, Mar, but now’s not the time. You’ve spent a lot of time researching in a way a normal person never would. You’re currently writing a history book together with Dave. I’ve read the foreword and chapter dividers you’ve written to lay out the current political and societal climate each individual in those letters lived in. A mere high school teacher can’t be expected to be at that level. Now kindly explain that darn F to me,” Jed demands. 

“I’m never there. It’s a waste of time so I take the opportunity to see my friends instead,” Marlon answers. 

Jed squeezes his eyes shut, pinches the bridge of his nose and growls. He takes a few deep breaths through his nose to calm down. It barely works. He opens his eyes. “The money? What did you use it for?”

“I told you. Doctor.”

“By all means, don’t expand on that,” Jed says, voice dripping of sarcasm.

“We heard the government has started conscripting people to the army. Laurent said something about maybe dying in battle so he didn’t have to suffer through the last stages of the EB50 poisoning. He said he hopes he lives long enough to present so he gets to feel what it’s like to knot someone and he’s been tiring more quickly lately, and I…” Marlon trails off when Jed’s scent turns into a complete jumble as he stares wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Marlon. 

“You faked my signature to take your friend to the hospital. Why didn’t you just come to me and say, ‘grandpa, I need money to take my friend to the hospital,’? Did you honestly expect me to say no to that?”

Marlon says nothing.

“You did…” Jed takes a step back, the scent of sadness lacing with the anger, eyes wide with shock. “By the grace of Athena, you think me such a monster I’d forbid you to try to save the life of a loved one,” he says and takes another step back.

Marlon swallows again. “You don’t approve of my friends,” he states.

Jed roars straight out, fangs dropping. Anger spikes again, covering the sadness. “No! I don’t approve of the drugs and the drinking. I disapprove of the way you come home smelling of blood, taking your pillow and blanket to curl up to sleep alone in the darn wardrobe. I would _never_ prohibit you to help save the life of a loved one! I’d gone to the bank myself to get that money. But you think―! What did I ever do for you to mistrust me that much?!”

Marlon looks at his feet resentfully. “I want my room back,” he mutters.

Jed throws his hands up. “I make one mistake and I’m forever paying for it, aren’t I? One mistake.”

Marlon looks back up with a sulky frown. “If you think it was a mistake, why won’t you give me my room back?”

“Because Karen won’t let me! She thinks you need to be reined in and controlled and that I’m too weak and lenient on you. She’s vetoed my suggestion to let you have your darn room back and she’s the Main and I’m just the Patriarch. It’s out of my hands!”

“But she’s not here. She’s out fighting the war so she’s as good as dead anyway,” Marlon grumps.

The words are barely out of his mouth before he’s slammed against the wall and pinned there by Jed’s forearm against his throat. “Watch it! That’s my mate you’re talking about,” Jed hisses inches from his face before removing the pressure. He looks furious but he smells like pain and sadness. “She’s an aching hole in my heart every second of the day, boy, and I don’t want to hear any talk about her dying, you hear?”

Marlon bends his head and licks his lips.

“You know the worst part?” Jed goes on. “She’s out there risking her life every day, acting like a general but leading from the front. I worry myself sick. I don’t believe in truemates and yet I’ve always been perfectly content with only her. Your grandma and I met as kits and we got mated days after we presented. We’ve grown and changed over the decades we’ve been mated, evolved together. But these last years… We’ve changed again the both of us. But this time in opposite directions and I’m sat here wondering where the woman I love like life itself has gone and if she’s ever coming back from the frontline. Metaphorically. I’m here trying to run a nationwide company in the middle of a war while managing the needs of 69 people. I’m trying to make sure the kits and Juvies in the pack get the best kithood possible while our country’s burning, trying to do the job we divided between five people before, trying to uphold calm despite all my kits are out there head to toe with the Union trash. And somehow I almost manage to make it run like a smooth clockwork engine. But then there’s you.”

Marlon looks up at that to meet his grandpa’s gaze. 

“There you are. The only cogwheel in the clockwork that spins the wrong direction. I can’t get through to you no matter what I do! You repeatedly accuse me of not listening to you but you don’t talk to me! Every day I need to wonder what you’ll do to put yourself in danger that day. Taking a car over the bridge without an armed escort? Walking around the city with a briefcase full of money? Overdosing on drugs? Get into a fight with the wrong thug? Be ambushed by robbers? Get kidnapped? I have a ball of ice in my stomach every day at work worrying over you, wondering if you’re still alive and if it’s one of your good days or one of your bad ones. Do I come home to find you helping Jane cook after having played with the kits or helped out in the greenhouse or do I come home to find that you’ve aggressively marked up someone’s closet so they don’t dare to get their clothes, or that you’ve trashed a room for no apparent reason? You’re utterly unpredictable, selfish and too darn territorial. It’s always ‘me, me, me’ with you. You equal disagreeing with you with not listening to you, which is cow’s dung. I listen. But you come to me with these theories based on unconfirmed rumours and you demand instant action which is foolish beyond belief and could have terrible consequences to us if I jumped into action based on a whim of yours. But when I ask you to come back when you’ve got proof you throw a fit and go sulk somewhere. Why won’t you meet me halfway, Mar? _Why?_ And then Karen tells me I’m being too lenient. That you need to learn discipline. But she’s not here to see the single-mindedness with which you throw yourself onto a task, your passion, how you get things done with no regards for whether it’s difficult, painful, or thought to be impossible. You have discipline. You have intelligence and grit and absolutely no care for how your actions impact on others. Punishing you is useless because you promptly show up to take your punishment then shrug it off. You never contemplate why you’re being punished. You never regret your actions. Then what’s the point?!”

They stare at each other in silence for a moment. Jed seems to be waiting for Marlon to say something but Mar keeps quiet. He feels unjustly accused. He’s not selfish. He just wants what’s his to be his.

Jed raises his eyebrows in a gesture demanding Marlon to speak.

“The bank,” Marlon says. “There’s a new law―”

Jed interrupts him with an impatient gesture. “I know. They informed me when they called to say I could no longer send my grandkits to withdraw money for campaign contributions. I’ve already opened personal accounts for all of us. Don’t look at me like that, boy, I opened an account for you too. On top of that, every core member is now listed by name as owners of our company and can withdraw money from the company funds. But you better use your personal account for the stuff you get up to. The company funds are closely monitored every year and money withdrawn has to have a plausible cause. You need more money than you have in your account you come talk to me.”

“Something needs to be done about that law. It another move by the Conservatives to eradicate packrunning―” The dark look on Jed’s face shuts him up. 

Jed takes a deep breath as if he’s gathering patience and lets it out through his nose. “Mar, this is another greedy grab from the government for assets they have no right to. But it will mainly hurt working-class Conservatives, not Packrunners. So yes, something needs to be done about that law and I’m on it. And yes, I appreciate the radical solution you offered to the bank teller and I’ve drawn inspiration from it when I started our counter move. But, no, it’s not a move directed solely towards Packrunners. Conservatives are the most vulnerable to this law because they live in monogamous relationships where the Alpha is most often listed as the owner of shared assets. Conservatives are also more likely to let the Omega stay at home to raise the kits when the Alpha leaves to fight in the war. When the Alpha dies…” Jed lifts an eyebrow pointedly.

Marlon hadn’t thought of that.

Jed turns to walk to his desk, grabs something, comes back, snatches the grade paper from Marlon and instead hands him a bank book and a checkbook. “This is yours. Now get out of here. I’ve got work to do. And _never_ forge my signature again.”

“Thank you,” Marlon says and hastens to leave.

“Oh, and, Mar?” Jed says when Marlon’s halfway out the door. Marlon stops and looks back at him, expecting the punishment to come. “Karen’s forbidden me to give you your room back, but she’s never said anything about all the other empty rooms. Rhetoric is everything.”

“I want _my_ room,” Marlon insists stubbornly.

Anger spikes in Jed’s scent again. “Get out,” he says with a sharp, dismissive gesture.

* * *

Late that evening Marlon goes to his grandpa’s room to sleep. Jed’s still in his office, working. Marlon takes his pillow and comforter and goes into the closet to sleep like he does sometimes when he wants to be alone and shut a door between himself and the rest of the pack. It’s dark, crammed and uncomfortable but still feels like a safe haven. He uses a flashlight to navigate the tight space and spots a new, wooden box on the floor by his stack of treasured books. He crouches down to investigate. The box has a sturdy lock and there’s a key on top of it. He uses the key to look inside. The box is made to seal airtight with a lining that keeps smells hidden from all but the most sensitive noses. He gasps when he sees what’s inside. There, is his stash of downers his grandpa confiscated earlier. There’s a note telling him not to let the kits get at it under any circumstances.

Jarred, he takes one of the downers out and swallows it. Why would his grandpa give it back? He gets this sinking feeling in his gut and opens the bank book for the first time since he got it. He’d expected it to be empty. It contains more money than he’d withdrawn for Laurent’s doctor’s visit. He puts the bank book and the checkbook into the box and locks it. Why would his grandpa grant him the money if he thought they’d be used to buy large quantities for drugs to be distributed? Jed didn’t know what the money was for when he opened the account.

It all makes him ill at ease. 

He rolls himself into his comforter, tucks himself into a corner with his pillow and hugs the box to his chest. Soon the downer takes hold and drags him into sleep.

* * *


	12. Present interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon keeps telling his story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short interlude to the next chapter. :)

* * *

“You’ve written a book…” Dick almost purrs. There’s even a sliver of arousal in his scent. Luci doubts anyone else here can smell it - it’s so faint. But it proves that physical prowess certainly isn’t the only thing that can rile up an O.

Marlon chuckles. “That one hardly counts since the only writing I did was the forewords and chapter dividers that clarified the political and societal environment for when each collection of letters were written. But it did get printed and distributed to any book store that would sell it. We also donated copies of it to every university and decent public library. To this day any library that wants a copy can contact me and I’ll send them a copy. If you’ve got any interest in reading it we have it in our library back at the estate. I need to take you all there someday and you’ll have access to my extensive collection of rare books.”

“Are the caves still there?” Dean asks hopefully. Mike's managed to make the switch once Marlon’s knot died down. It’s a polite knotting or Luci would have kicked his brother’s ass for disrupting. Dean and Mike are still straddling Marlon but Mike’s pulled Dean up on his lap and wrapped his arms around him to keep him in place. It doesn’t look all that comfortable, especially not for Dean, but Luci knows the chemicals released even in a polite knotting makes up for it. He still resents Mike a bit for it.

“Naturally. But we've secured all the ways in and out. These days those caves are a fully integrated part of our holding. We’ve bought up all the land we could get our hands on that the caves run under, and leased it back to the house owners up top. This way we can prohibit them from building things that would unknowingly reach the cave system," Marlon tells them.

“You mentioned a greenhouse? You still got it? I wish we could build a greenhouse here too. On the roof maybe? Can that be done? Is the roof flat enough for it? Are there rules that prohibit it?” Dean asks.

“Dean. We don’t have to grow our own produce,” Mike says smiling with a tone that’s condescending and indulgent at the same time. “You’re rich now. You can buy whatever you need.” 

“Don’t mock that kind of thinking, son,” Marlon chastises. “That kind of thinking is what saved our riches. Grandpa Jed’s genius lie not only in his ability to grow our riches but in his foresight to counter for when times would change. Even in the midst of war we were rich enough to import or buy what we needed or wanted and he still had us grow fresh vegetables. It was framed as a hobby and most of the kits enjoyed making things grow and getting to eat what they themselves had helped produce. But after the bank law he swiftly built a counter for it, building a huge vault in the cellar and investing in solid gold, diamonds, and the sort of valuables that would keep its value and could be stashed away for a long time. He no longer trusted the banks with all our liquid assets and the vault was filled with gold bars and other valuables for the instance of our assets being frozen in the future.”

“That’s smart,” Dean says.

“Mhm,” Marlon agrees. “Today we’ve got several vaults like that in key places. Not as big as the one back at the estate, but it’d be very hard for robbers or the government to seize all our riches at once.”

“Wow,” Dean marvels. “Like fairytale treasures?”

“Exactly like that,” Mike agrees and kisses Dean’s shoulder. “It’s part of my job to set aside some of our gains from the company both to buy gold and to buy bonds and make other investments like art or antiques.”

“Huh.”

Dick’s mind isn’t focused on riches, though. “I feel like you’ve lied to me, Marlon,” he says with a pleasant smile and runs a finger along Marlon’s collar bone. “You did tell me you and Laurent had a good rapport. But you now say he was your best friend. I know it wasn’t an outright lie, but ‘best friend’ goes above ‘good rapport’ and it’s bothered me that Laurent told you about my past. Now it makes sense that he did. It makes less sense that you didn’t simply say he was your best friend.”

Sadness winds itself through Marlon’s contentment. “I’m afraid that life frayed that friendship. By the time you met Laurent we were still friends, but no longer as close as we once were. Several factors played a part in that. When I brought him to doctor Jenkins I had no ulterior motive. I wanted him to live to experience the things he wanted to experience. But Laurent was a man of honour. He insisted he owed me, refusing to accept his prolonged life as a gift with no strings attached. I was determined never to call in that favour, but in the end, I pulled a priceless on him. It put a lot of strain on our relationship and if it wasn’t for Arvid it might have ended our friendship completely.”

“You met Arvid again?” Raff asks. “I thought that was a one-time encounter.”

Marlon’s big smile crinkles his eyes and shows his gums. “I certainly did. Several times. Once, briefly, not long after I took Laurent to the hospital. Jed lifted all my restrictions after that day. I couldn’t get my room back but I was no longer under any restrictions. I could come and go as I pleased.”

“So you won,” Mike states, interrupting.

“I did anything but, son. It should have felt like a victory, but it didn’t. I didn’t realise why at the time, I only felt uncomfortable and restless. But the truth was that grandpa Jed had given up on me. He no longer counted on me as an important part of the pack. He would, again, later. When he stopped giving me his attention I started doing anything and everything to regain it. I remember the day crystal clear when I finally won him back. I thought I was being punished but on the contrary, he’d regained his hopes for me. I’d just written my second book, this time a history book that summarized the facts of all the Packrunner books I’d amassed. I’m afraid my extremist Packrunner bias shone through clearly in that book which is why I later came to regret having it printed and distributed. I had yet to learn the art of subtlety. That book was as subtle as trying to play poker while showing your whole hand and yelling for everyone to look at it. Grandpa Jed read it, then called me into his office. For a long while he reclined in his chair regarding me while running his fingers over his lips thoughtfully. I felt my palms get sweaty and my heart rate spike. He was using his trick to withhold the emotions in his scent and it was wreaking havoc on my nerves. Then, suddenly, he leaned forward, patted my book twice and said ‘I’m transferring you to another school. I expect you to be on your best behaviour and learn what you can’t learn from your collection of books or from the school you’re currently attending. That’s all. Dismissed.’ You can imagine my confusion.”

Luci screws up his face in perplexion. “But… weren’t you attending the best school already?”

Marlon’s lips curve in a sly smile. “I was. At least, I was attending what was widely considered the best school in the city. The new school… I was convinced I was being punished. Can anyone of you guess why?” He looks around to meet the gaze of all of them with a hopeful glint in his eyes.

Luci knows that glint. It’s the greatest load of pressure that exists for him. It means father wants them to be able to figure it out and if they don’t, the worst thing that can ever happen will happen - he’ll be disappointed. Luci looks at his brothers only to see the hesitance in their eyes as well. Nobody wants to be wrong when father has that spark of anticipation in his eyes.

“I do believe I have a fairly good idea,” Dick says and saves them all. “Since most mainstream education was and still is Conservatively based, and you were deep-diving into Packrunner books, my guess is that he wanted to give you yet another perspective, fill out your colour palette, so to speak. So he put you into a Progressive school.”

Marlon lets out a pleased chirp and purrs. “That’s exactly what he did. I felt wronged by it, and was mad as a cat in a sack, but his action is a gift that has kept on giving to this day. And I’ll confess to you that once I was enrolled and had my first history class, I was absolutely fascinated. There was a class called Origins that neither Primal nor Conservative faculties offer and it has given me a much deeper understanding of Progs. Though, I regret to say that it took me a while to accept anything they taught me in that class as facts, since it puts a rather dark spotlight on Primals and Conservatives alike. We can be a cruel lot when we want to. However, it did teach me something very important about the war. And that is that nobody hates Union Progs more than our Progs, and for good reason.”

“Because we lump them together in the same category,” Mike says. He should know since he’d dated a Prog.

“That’s right,” Marlon agrees.

“I hate to interrupt this, Father, but I’m awfully curious about Arvid. You were telling us about when you met him again…?” Raff urges.

Marlon nods. “As I said, I could come and go as I pleased, and I did. But Aiden still tagged along more often than not under the pretence of keeping an eye on me. He was such an nuisance. He was by far the best fighter between us but he constantly worried about conflicts that would lead to violence. He thought I’d get into fights. Which I did. Often.” Marlon sniggers. “More often when he wasn’t around since I worried about him getting hurt.”

“Yeah, I can relate to that,” Dean says. “Sammy is so fucking badass it’s scary but if I can diffuse a situation when he’s with me, I try to do that because he’s still my little brother. Like, part of me still sees him as that chubby-cheeked little kit he used to be.”

“I can’t relate,” Luci says and sniggers at Mike. It isn’t quite true, of course, but who can resist a little teasing?

“Me neither,” Mike counters narrowing his eyes at Luci.

Raff clears his throat and gives them both a dry look that makes both Luci and Mike giggle self consciously. “That doesn’t count, bunny,” Luci defends. “You’re several years younger than us and have a handicap that made you a target for bullying in school. Of course, we’re going to be protective of you.”

Marlon chuckles. “As it should be, no matter how annoying it is. So this day, I’d gone into the city with Aiden in tow. I had a bank account of my own and since he saw me bring my checkbook he wouldn’t let me go alone. All I wanted to do was buy glass beads for Clara so she could make me jewelry I actually wanted to wear for a change, but he wouldn’t believe it unless he saw it. Then, when we were down on Market Square in Old town we stood bickering about something pointless, the wind was in my face. I see Aiden scent the air, lift his gaze to look at something behind me that made his eyes darken. At the same time someone yelled ‘Get off my lawn, you Packrunning sniffler garbage!’ I was instantly enraged and ready to maim. So I pivoted around with a roar, and there he was. On the other side of the square Arvid is grinning his impish grin at me, dressed up in an American uniform. I can’t recall ever going from rage to completely overjoyed in such short timespan as I did then. I ran up to him yipping my happiness and bowled him over with a hug, proceeding to mark him up with no thought of consent.”

“Did he get mad?” Dick asks. It’s a very relevant question coming from someone who’s frequently been marked up without getting asked if that’s okay.

Marlon chuckles and reaches out to caress Dick’s cheekbone briefly. “No. He just lay there on the ground laughing while I asserted my claim. Once I was done he rolled us around and marked me up just as thoroughly. Aiden wasn’t happy about that. He approached puffed up, flaring in full, fangs dropped and growling a cold threat. Arvid sat up like Dean’s doing now, looked at Aiden without saying a word, and then he grabbed me and spun us around again so I was on top, wordlessly handing over the reins to me.”

“Now, see, this is why he said he wouldn’t make a good dad,” Dean states. “Back when you were a kit he let you lead. And he gave over command to you right away while you were a Juvie. The guy sounds like a hoot to hang with but I get why your uncle called him a breeder.”

“The way you talk about him I’m almost surprised you didn’t search him out and got mated to him,” Raff says. “It sounds like you loved him.”

“I did love him,” Marlon agrees with a sly quirk to his lips. “But there are different kinds of love.”

“Yes, and then you met dad and fell in love for real,” Mike declares.

“Everyone kept telling me I had Juvie or kit-crushes, which I did, of course. But most were of the platonic type. However, your dad wasn’t my first love. First time I fell in love I was still a Juvie. It took one whiff of her for me to know I wanted her in my life forever.”

“Like me and Cas…”

“Mmm… Sadly, she was too close to presenting when I met her. The year that happened was a very hard year for all our hearts…”

* * *


	13. The Love of a Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon's sly talk to the bank teller unwittingly and through byways brings Arvid back into Marlon's life again if only for a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp. I'm going ahead and posting this too since the last one was so short and I'm working a 24-hour shift tomorrow. :)

* * *

“ _Get off my lawn, you Packrunning sniffler garbage!_ ”

Marlon swings around with a roar, fangs dropping, ready to tear the heckler asunder. His eyes fall on a tall soldier on the other side of the square, shaking his fist at them. The soldier’s grinning like he just made a joke and there’s something familiar about him. It still takes Marlon half a second to recognise him. Last time he saw the man he had a red beard, short-cropped hair and was wearing uncle Michael’s clothes. But now Arvid’s face is clean shaven, his blond hair is long and collected in a loose bun atop his head.

Marlon forgets how to breathe, he swears his heart skips a beat before it starts hammering madly. He yips high-pitched in pure joy and runs over to throw himself in Arvid’s spreading arms. He comes running with such speed that he knocks Arvid to the ground when he thunders into the waiting embrace. Arvid squeals with laughter. Marlon rubs his temples and neck glands wherever he can reach. They’re producing as much secretion as they do when he greets aunt Lucifer or uncle Michael when they come home from the front, maybe even more. If he wasn’t filled with this overwhelming feeling of sheer happiness he might have reflected on how that related to the chapter about bonding they’re working on in biology class. At the moment he can’t even think coherent enough for words, though. He purrs and yips and marks Arvid up so thoroughly Arvid’s cheeks and neck glistens with the coating of silken secretion from Marlon’s glands.

“Whoa, Peepers!” Arvid laughs and closes his eyes tilting his head to the side so Marlon can reach better. “Be careful with your legs so you don’t fire my gun by mistake. The gun laws may not extend to soldiers but we still can’t go around shooting people in their feet.”

Marlon adjusts his straddling position without breaking stride, only responding with yet another delighted yip. Arvid lets his arms fall from around Marlon to rest on the ground over his head - a complete surrender to the fervent, possessive greeting. He smells incredibly happy, a mirror of Marlon’s own scent, smile closed-lipped and wide, fangs long enough to peek out and dent his lower lip. Marlon finally deems Arvid marked up enough to bury his nose by Arvid’s neck gland to inhale deeply the scent of the grown man’s joy. 

“Cap..? Should you really let him mark you up like that? He doesn’t smell like your family,” someone standing to the side asks. Marlon doesn’t move but he lifts his gaze to see the lower body and legs of another soldier. Behind him, there are several other pairs of uniformed legs.

“Relax, Branson. This is Ares,” Arvid answers still smiling. “Although…”

Arvid grabs Marlon’s sides and with a heave, Marlon finds himself on the ground and their roles reversed with Arvid rubbing his head and neck against Marlon instead. To the side, he hears chuckles from the soldiers but he couldn’t care less. Instead, he opens up and lets Arvid mark him.

An ice-cold growl penetrates the shared bliss. Arvid sits up straddling Marlon and looks towards the growl. Marlon turns his head to see Aiden come stalking, eyes like red spotlights, head lowered menacingly, every tooth in sharp points and fangs on full display. The wind is too strong in the wrong direction for Marlon to smell the hostility but Aiden looks ready to rip Arvid’s throat out. The soldiers on Marlon’s other side tense up, hands going to their belts where their handguns are. Arvid makes a primal sound for stand down, stopping them from acting. Arvid looks down at Marlon, squeezes his thighs and tips to the side, once again reversing their position so Marlon’s on top while Arvid lays in complete surrender underneath him. Marlon quickly shifts to stand on all fours over him protectively. Looking at his brother, he growls an equally icy threat.

Aiden stops in his track and lets his flare die. “Mar,” he says and compresses his lips to a thin line, eyeing the soldiers warily.

“If you don’t like it, you can scram,” Marlon snipes.

“Mar, look at their guns. Our division is the only one with guns like that and they _don’t_ belong to our division,” Aiden says, still poised for a fight.

“Yes. Where do you think they got the intel needed for that?” Marlon answers testily, lifting a hand to stroke Arvid over the hair, combing out the mess he’s made of it without looking away from Aiden.

Aiden blinks in surprise, gaze jumping from the soldiers to Marlon.

“Yes, me,” Marlon answers the unspoken question. “Are you going to behave so I can make proper introductions or are you going to be a turdhead so I need to chase you off?”

Aiden crosses his arms over his chest and looks at the ground grumpily, making a ‘ _Grmt_ ’ sound of unwilling acquiesce. 

Marlon looks down at Arvid again to find him smile in soft amusement. “You’re just as bossy as you were as a kit,” Arvid says. “Glad life hasn’t burned that out of you yet.”

Aiden scoffs and Marlon smirks. Marlon gets off Arvid and holds a hand out to help Arvid get up with a little yank. “Come. Let me introduce you to my brother.”

“Cap?”

Arvid makes a placating gesture towards his men. There are four of them but no one Marlon recognises. All are dressed in American uniforms. Aiden comes forward but stops a stride away. Marlon deems it close enough. “Aiden, this is Arvid Mattsson, a _friend_ of mine,” he stresses the friend-part pointedly. “Arvid, this is Aiden, my big brother.”

“Pleased to officially meet you without a steel door between us, Aiden,” Arvid says with an open smile and tilts his head to the side to offer his neck. “Peepers has talked a lot about you. All good stuff, I might add.” When Aiden doesn’t approach to scent him right away Arvid offers his hand to shake as well.

Aiden narrows his eyes, hesitates for a bit then takes a step forward to scent Arvid, ignoring the hand. Arvid lets his hand drop and remains passive through the very thorough scenting. Aiden takes a smaller step back, only slightly more relaxed now. “Mar has talked a lot about you too but I’m not liking any of it no matter how well he framed it,” he says and offers his own neck for a scenting.

“I bet. I tried to warn him about me but it was like being handcuffed to a train going full speed,” Arvid says nosing carefully on Aiden’s neck before backing off. Marlon really, _really_ wants these two to like each other.

Aiden huffs. He’s still full of scepticism with his eyes narrowed, but he cracks a tiny smile and the hostility in his scent goes down a notch. “Tell me about it. Still. He should have been brought home to safety. Not to a place like the Sanctuary.”

“What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know he’d forced a promise on you all. I was convinced I’d get re-captured if I showed up at your gates with him and I couldn’t exactly leave a kit who’d made his first kill. I had to secure food and housing for us both and the only place I knew I could get that here was burning merrily at the time.”

Aiden’s eyes widen in shock and jump to Marlon. “Killed?”

“They were Snatchers. Arvid reminded me that I hadn’t planned for how to get home―”

“So the little imp just said goodbye and left. Walked away without second thought. I couldn’t allow that so I followed, but he’d been all ‘I can handle it myself’ all night so I kept enough distance for him not to smell me just to keep an eye on him. When he was waylaid by the Snatchers I was too far off to stop it from happening but by the time I reached him one of them was already dead and the other fleeing in fright.”

Aiden looks from one to the other with eyes wide with belated worry. “What’s a Snatcher?”

“They kitnap orphaned kits and sell them into slavery,” Marlon answers. “But the police won’t do anything because they bribe them.”

“You should have seen your brother,” Arvid says, beaming with pride. “He fought like a fiend the moment he was grabbed. One of them tried to choke him out against a wall but he kept his head cold enough to pull the guy closer with his legs and tear his throat out with his claws. Then he clawed an eye out from the other guy and when the eye got stuck on his claw he pulled it off with his mouth and spit it at the guy. I was in legit awe. But Peepers had a strong reaction to what happened so I brought him with me.”

Aiden stares in pure horror at Marlon. “Why didn't you tell us?"

“Because you were all nagging about 'what if something would have happened to you?’ None of you would listen to me when I said I could take care of myself. I didn't trust you not to handcuff me to someone and _never_ give me any privacy.”

"On that note," Arvid adds seriously, “he didn't make a pack call when it happened and I've regretted not having a talk with him about it.”

Marlon rolls his eyes. "I don't want to hear it. What are you doing here anyway? What's with the uniform? Did you join our forces?”

Arvid chuckles. “Hardly. No, we came to the US making a delivery―”

"Of what?" Aiden cuts him off.

Arvid looks at Aiden with an easy smile. “Refugees. In some parts of Europe, things are much worse than here. We raid work camps over there and reunite prisoners with their families or take them to a safer place than where they are.”

Aiden looks skeptically at him. "So you're trying to convince me that you fight for money over here but are heroes over there?” he asks dryly.

Arvid sniggers and shakes his head. “Nope. We get paid good money for those raids by the families of the imprisoned.”

"And those who can't pay? You just leave them?”

Arvid shakes his head. "If they're Packrunners or Primals they can join us if they want. If the Packrunners don't, we can still escort them to safety in exchange for a favour promised. The others are allowed to pay off the cost of the escort if they choose. Otherwise, they may try to make it away on their own. Our raids make a great chance to escape.”

Aiden nods like it isn't half as upsetting as he found the idea that they fought for money over here but not over there. “So Packrunners can get your services for free in exchange for a priceless?”

“Yes. Sometimes they end up never ever seeing us again, sometimes we show up at their doorstep and call the favour in.”

Marlon can never imagine pulling a priceless on someone―a blind promise to do whatever asked no matter how costly to yourself―those who gave that kind of promise basically no longer owned their lives. Maybe that's why the Demon is called the Demon? He's dealing with souls, after all.

“The uniforms?" Marlon prompts.

Arvid grins. “Didn't you hear? It's Banking Day next week," he says and winks.

"You have a bank account here?”

One of the other soldiers standing behind Arvid sniggers and exchanges a quick glance with Arvid silently asking for permission to speak. “No, Sirs," he says after gaining it. “But the Commander heard all Packrunners would be recalled from the front to go to the bank on the same day to try to remove a new law so he granted permission to anyone willing to show our support. City-living Conservatives with no family on the front aren't particularly vulnerable to this law. But they get nervous when they see a bunch of armed soldiers on their streets. So when they stop us and ask why we're here we inform them. That we're early for Banking Day. That next Friday every single Packrunner will be back from the front to go to the bank since we're law-abiding citizens. It's doubtful that the banks are likely to be able to service all of us on Friday but that doesn’t matter. We can wait.”

They share a snigger and even Aiden cracks a smile. 

Another soldier speaks. “Sometimes a civilian will go ‘This is desertion! You’ll get arrested by the MPs!’ and we’ll go, ‘As soon as the MPs have finished their banking business I’m sure they’ll get right to it, Sir.’” He pauses to snigger and Aiden’s smile turns into an openly amused grin. “That shakes them up. We’ve only been here for a day and people are already flocking around city hall to protest. It’s the same in any big city we go to. We got word earlier today that there were riots down in L.A. And in Washington, there’s a huge protest march.”

“What most people don’t realise here in America that is Conservatively run,” Arvid fills in, “is that in politics Packrunners are outmatched 30 to 1, but amongst high ranking military it’s the other way around. Nashville saw troops flooding in no matter the soldiers’ designation because one of your most high ranking Generals had gotten an order from his Main. But in most cases, Conservative soldiers are stranded to fend off the Union by themselves. Or, that’s the plan if the law isn’t repealed before Friday next week.”

Both Marlon and Aiden laugh and Aiden looks at Marlon with slightly narrowed eyes and a gleam of restrained pride. Jed had said he’d drawn inspiration from Marlon’s radical solution. Rather than only calling his own pack home he’d gotten _every_ pack in on it and given the politicians fair warning of when it was about to happen. But it was Marlon’s idea originally and Aiden knows it, he was there.

“So most of you are Packrunners. But none of you smells pack-bonded?” Aiden asks.

“No. We don’t do that. It would bring complications,” one of the soldiers answers.

"It's not that complicated. Most of us are Packrunners, or Primals who approve of packrunning but aren't quite into the lifestyle themselves. All of us have been picked up along the way as the last survivors of packs or have been separated from our packs for long enough for the bond to fade. Many of us have seen our loved ones die gruesome deaths, have been prisoners of war or in other ways been too scarred to easily fit with normal people anymore. We travel a lot and lose people along the way not only to combat, but to love and hope of actually living again. The Commander lets us go if we find a mate or a pack we want to stay with,” another one explains. “But if we’d bond together our needs would suddenly change and we’d want kits and mates and territory. Not ideal for a fighting unit.”

“But you fight Packrunners?" Aiden might phrase it like a question but there's an unmistakable accusation in his voice.

“Sure we do. You never heard of pack wars?" one of the soldiers answers with a smirk.

Arvid changes the subject before any gruff can start. “Hey, congratulations to managing to shut down the factory, Peepers. Too bad it was too late for Laurent. I liked him. I was a bit bummed he had to die.”

Marlon frowns in confusion. "What are you talking about? He isn't dead.”

"He isn't? Darn! I could have sworn he had two years in him at the most. He must be quite a fighter. Any chance we could go see him?”

* * *

That's how they end up at the Sanctuary. 

They're sitting on the biggest couch in the back that Marlon and his friends annex as their own anytime they go here. Chairs have been snatched and put opposite the couch on the other side of the low table to fit them all. They're already several drinks into their visit and Marlon can't be bothered to memorize the names of Arvid's men. He'd sat down beside Arvid, felt like the distance between them was too great and promptly lifted Arvid's arm to place it around his shoulders. Then he put his head on Arvid's chest and inhaled deeply, looking up. Arvid just laughed at him, accepting the forced cuddle in stride. Arvid laughs as much as Marlon remembers. His men tell stories about him, about the betting pool over his death that's reached 50253 dollars now, and how it got started, about all the times they thought they'd lost him and how he'd shown up one way or another with a smile on his lips. Dinged up, bruised and battered, half-drowned, burned, starved or dehydrated, but always smiling and always smelling unbothered. The men think Arvid is fab but say their Commander is worried, saying Arvid is already dead and waiting for his body to catch up. Marlon thinks it's complete cow's dung. That's saying Arvid is soulless and Marlon thinks the eyes he's been staring up at for the last five minutes can't possibly be lacking a soul. He pushes himself up to rub his neck affectionately against Arvid's cheek for the umpteenth time.

Arvid laughs and scratches Marlon's neck with the arm around his shoulders. “Darn, Peepers, you're even more affectionate than I remembered.” He turns his gaze towards Aiden, Laurent, Laurent’s cousin Malicia and a few other of Marlon’s friends. “Is he always like this?”

“No,” Aiden answers disgruntledly while most of Marlon’s friends shake their heads. At the same time, Laurent and Malicia answer “Yes.” Laurent answers with amusement and Malicia with the same disgruntlement as Aiden.

Arvid laughs. “I must be special.” He looks back down at Marlon and lowers his voice. “You don’t even cuddle your brother like this?”

“Sometimes. But Aiden…” Marlon pushes himself up to pull off his sweater to put some rather nasty bite scars on display. He drops the sweater on the ground and reaches for his drink to take a sip while he points to the scars.

“It’s not that I don’t like snuggling with him,” Aiden defends himself when Arvid looks his way with a raised eyebrow. “But the little bastard always starts to rearrange my limbs as he seems fit and Athena forbid that I try to do something else at the same time, like reading. He’s a little turdhead like that.”

“Not so little anymore,” Marlon mutters.

“Absolutely not. You’ve both grown a lot,” Arvid agrees. Looking at Aiden, he says, “You look more like a man than a Juvie. You have to shave every day or did you save up to that stubble?”

“Every day. The pack thinks I’m getting close to presenting.”

“You don’t?”

Aiden shakes his head.

“I have to shave too,” Marlon points out.

Aiden huffs in amusement and pulls up his lip in that sceptical, condescending, lopsided smirk he has when he takes Marlon down a peg or two so Marlon feels ire rising before Aiden even says something. “Yeah. But how often? Twice a week, at most. Pfft.”

Normally, that comment wouldn’t have ticked Marlon off that much. But he’s fuzzy from the alcohol and it’s really important to him to look good in front of Arvid. He’s up and standing, doing a half drop of fangs while growling darkly at his brother who leans back unbothered where he sits, lopsided smirk widening to an equally dark, smug challenge. They fight too often and the outcome is almost always the same - with Marlon suffering defeat. It’s never a fair fight because not only is Aiden the better fighter, but Marlon’s strength is his viciousness that he has to hold back not to cause lasting damages on his precious big brother. The rest of Marlon’s friends don’t know this, though, they only know what Marlon gets like when he loses it. The moment Marlon’s standing Laurent and several of their other friends stand up reeking of anxiety putting themselves between the brothers, all facing Marlon licking their lips submissively, holding up their hands placatingly to try to get him to calm down. Not that Marlon listens to their pleas for peace. What he does listen to is Arvid, grabbing his wrist and saying, “Hey now, Ares, you know how long it’s been since I got the chance to snuggle with someone who doesn’t want to knot me? Come on,” then pulling a little on Marlon’s wrist while purring his soothing, parental purr.

“Hah! Last week you bullied the Commander to a cuddle,” one of Arvid’s men says teasingly.

“Firstly, I get to sleep cuddled with him a few times a year tops and most of those times are when I’m badly hurt or ill. Secondly, _I_ want _him_ to knot me so it still falls into the same category,” Arvid retorts.

Marlon gives in to the tug and sits down beside Arvid again, anger dissipating when Arvid tucks him in against his chest. Marlon hasn't heard a purely parental purr directed towards him for two years. He misses it. Not that he _needs_ it. But… it’s nice. He puts his ear against Arvid’s pec to hear the rumble within better, with the added bonus of a steady heartbeat accompanying it. One of Arvid’s hands trail up and down his spine the other scratches his hair, untangling curls gently much like aunt Luci likes to do when she’s feeling calm and cuddly. Marlon wraps his arms around Arvid and glares at his brother who glares back.

“He already has a dad, you know?” Aiden remarks to Arvid when the others have sat down.

“Hah. Barely,” Marlon argues testily from within Arvid’s calming embrace. “Without photos, I would hardly remember what our parents look like. And last time they were home they were all mopey because mom is left barren after she was injured. The heck would they need more kits when they can’t even be bothered to love the ones they already have?”

“They love us just fine, Mar. Just because you need constant attention doesn’t mean they don’t love us and you know it. They’re out there _protecting us_.” Aiden scowls and flares in annoyance. This is a touchy subject for both of them. He downs his drink and puts it down with a hard clink on the low table in front of him then gestures harshly at Arvid. “And you go give your affection away to some random merc you met once. He probably has a pseudo-kit in every port.”

That makes Arvid’s men burst into laughter. “Noo, he sure as hell doesn’t, Red. Cap isn’t one to lie but when he told us about Ares we thought he was lying. Kits hate him. They fear him. Unless they’re dumb as mud they keep their distance. Juvies like yourself find him interesting because he’s mad, but that right there,” one of the men says and points with his thumb at Arvid, “is new.”

“Jordan,” one of the men says and smacks the other on the arm. “This is what I was talking about the other day. Whether it’s the best to stay at home and let the enemy come close before you fight her or if you leave your pack to fight far away to prevent her from ever becoming a threat on your home turf. I said fighting far away was better for the kits and you said to stay and fight at home.”

“Guess both of us were right.”

“At least you two got to choose. My pack got taken completely by surprise,” Arvid says looking at the two of them briefly before looking down to meet Marlon’s gaze instead. “I was born and raised in Sweden. Our town was centred around a big factory that was the livelihood and lifeblood of most packs living there. If they weren’t hired by the factory they owned shops and took care of supplying the town with what we needed. The factory hired whole packs and supplied us with housing close to work and school. That’s common practice in pack-run countries. The pack that hires you cares for the needs of the whole pack. The pay is pretty low but housing, electricity and water are free. So my pack were all simple factory workers. I was sent on an errand to a high ranking engineer in the company one day and stuck around to chat for a bit. He told me he’d gone to college in Berlin and after that, I knew staying in town wasn’t enough for me. I was going to leave to go to college somewhere and I was going to make something of myself.”

“You could afford school on factory wages?” Laurent asks.

Arvid looks up briefly to meet his gaze before staring down into Marlon’s eyes again. “School is mandatory and free in most parts of Sweden. In some places only a year but in industrial towns such as ours, we had nine years of mandatory school. It’s because the industry management wants everyone to be able to read instructions and so on to minimize the risk of accidents or incidents that could cost them money. Rural land only requires the basic minimum and big cities like this one generally have four to six years of mandatory school. Anyway, when I presented I left home with big dreams of college. What I wanted to study and become varied with the breeze. No matter how far I travelled it didn’t seem to be far enough. I made my way down through Denmark and steadily downward through Europe. I couldn’t find a place that felt right for me until I reached Greece and wind carried Kostas’ scent to my nose. It was so faint but I followed the trail anyway. I’d never smelt anyone like that. Who got my heart racing and every cell in my body tingling in excitement.”

The soldiers around them start smelling of sadness and while a look reveals that several of them are wearing small smiles, they’ve lowered their heads or are looking in Arvid’s direction with faraway gazes that shows that they too took the trip down memory lane to relive the first meeting with mates long dead. The only soldier that doesn’t smell sad is Arvid.

“I followed my nose down a dusty dirt road barely feeling the sun beat down on me,” Arvid goes on, “and suddenly, there he was. Standing with his back turned leaned against a fence so all I saw of him was that he was short and sinewy with black, greying hair. He lifted his head to scent and spun around with a look of wonder on his face. He had a big bushy moustache and leathery, wrinkled skin from working in the sun all his life. And when he saw me he smiled, flared lemon yellow and bright, deep purring. And I just knew. I knew that I was never ever going to leave. That was it for me. He was it for me. So for three years, I was happily farming grapes and olives outside of Kalamata in Greece. I got mated not only to Kostas but to all the other Alphas in the pack too. Georgios, Nikos, Spiros, and Minas. I got along famously with the other Os, Maria, Katerina, and Eleni. I no longer had any interest in going to college. Learning how to farm, how to speak and write greek was good enough for me. And sure, we knew there was a war going on. But Greece wasn’t involved. We got occasional news of unrest but we weren’t prepared.”

They’re all listening in silence now. At no point does Arvid look away from Marlon’s eyes. He strokes Marlon’s hair away from his face repeatedly. He smells completely calm and at ease but the petting feels self-soothing.

“They came at night when everyone else was asleep. I’d woken up because our donkey was making a ruckus so I’d gone out to check on her. That’s what denied me following my pack when they went. The Union simply bolted our doors and set our house on fire with everyone asleep inside. I know they crossed over without a problem. We always threw a handful of salt on the floor of each room after we’d swept, just to be on the safe side. Still…” Arvid pauses to let out a little sigh. “I was captured trying to get into the house to save them and shipped to a work camp in the Ottoman Empire and that’s where the Demon and his men picked me up. You were there that night, weren’t you, Lichtenstein?” He raises his head to look at one of his men.

“Sure was, Cap. I remember when you joined us,” Lichtenstein says. Marlon doesn’t think it’s his real name, but rather the place he’s from judging by the accent. “You didn’t run and try to flee when we broke open the doors to the barracks. You sauntered out to go sit on a log and watch the fight. All the time you were calling for your pack. But all quiet, like you didn’t expect them to hear or like the Commander said, asking them to be ready for your arrival in the afterlife. It was a darn spooky sound, I’ll tell you that. We thought there was no fire left in you but then one of the camp guards came too close to you and you jumped off the log, grabbed him by the hair to yank him close, shifted your head to bite his neck off, then you just jumped back up on your log to keep calling for your pack. That’s when the Commander said ‘He’s one of us’ and went to talk with you. Next thing I knew you were fighting side by side with us. What did he say to you? I’ve always wondered.”

“Oh, that’s easy. He told me who I was and what my mission was. To be honest I don’t remember all that much of that time period. I do remember that the following week I slept sandwiched between the Commander and Captain Darwin, bless his soul. The Commander kept forcing me to siphon the Captain.”

“How do you force someone to siphon?” Marlon asks.

“ _Why_ do you force someone to siphon?” Aiden asks almost at the same time. Aiden doesn’t smell as annoyed anymore.

“To save their lives,” the soldier someone had called Jordan earlier, answers. 

“Captain Mattsson was almost scentless when we found him,” Lichtenstein adds.

“As for how?” Arvid says and looks down at Marlon. “Almost the same way you make someone throw up, you just touch another part in the mouth. Like this,” he says and captures some of Marlon’s own secretion on his finger and holds the finger to Marlon’s mouth, opening his mouth to show Marlon to do the same. When Marlon opens his mouth Arvid pushes the oily finger to the roof of his mouth far back just before the throat. He massages with the finger hard enough for it to be uncomfortable. Instinctively, Marlon pushes at the finger with his tongue and, _voilá_ , he’s siphoning. Arvid retracts his finger as soon as he feels Marlon’s tongue push, preventing him from getting too much information aside from Marlon’s own secretion coating the finger. “That’s it,” Arvid says. “If someone’s scentless and past the point of wanting to live it can be hard to get them to siphon on their own. But once you manage to get them to do it it won’t be that long until instinct takes over and they attach themselves to your neck to siphon on their own. It can save lives. Now you try it on me.”

Marlon coats a finger with his secretion and moves his finger towards Arvid’s lips but Arvid captures his wrist before his hand is even halfway. “No. Use my secretion for this. Siphoning triggers sexual instincts outside of life-threatening situations so I might end up skunking again otherwise. We’re just practising. I want to know you can do it right. Okay?”

Marlon grumbles but uses his other hand to swipe some secretion from Arvid’s neck. Arvid opens his mouth and lets Marlon try until he succeeds, but unlike Arvid, Marlon doesn’t pull his finger back at once when Arvid starts siphoning. Arvid scrunches up his nose and teeths all his teeth into sharp points, the sting of it making Marlon pull back his finger and smirk at the reprimanding look Arvid gives him.

To the side of them the conversation continues without them, one of the soldiers offering to show the rest and Laurent asking Aiden if they can try it out together. It barely registers to Marlon. He’s caught up in Arvid’s low intensity flared gaze. What does register is the discomfort in Arvid’s scent that wasn’t there before Marlon forced him to siphon, keeping his finger in Arvid’s mouth long enough to make sure Arvid didn’t just siphon his own secretion. Now Arvid’s gaze is searching his for something. “Yes,” Marlon answers the unspoken question with a lowered voice to keep it private. “I’m messing with things I don’t know anything about. But siphoning is a bonding thing, isn’t it?”

Arvid huffs and relaxes. “It is. But someone who hasn’t presented doesn’t have the hormones to trigger that kind of bonding. Unless the person is depressed enough to be scentless or next to it, you’re going to have to stick to marking them up to bond them, you absolute brat.”

Marlon purrs and rubs his neck and temple against Arvid in response, loving how that makes Arvid laugh and the discomfort to dissipate. “Are you going home with Texas tonight? He’s been asking for you.”

“Texas? You mean Joe? The bouncer?” Arvid asks with amusement twinkling in his eyes. Joe. All these years and Marlon never bothered to ask his name. He’s just been calling him Texas until it stuck. Joe doesn’t seem to mind the nickname and every time Marlon comes to the Sanctuary while he works he asks ‘Is your dad coming?’ even though Marlon knows he knows by now that Arvid isn’t his real dad. It hadn’t passed Marlon by what looks were traded by Joe and Arvid when they got here.

“Yes. I’ll allow it,” Marlon answers with a content smile.

It gets him more laughter before Arvid nods. “Okay.”

“Okay? Good.”

“Did you know your eyes aren’t really lilac?” Arvid says with a fascinated smile after a short silence. “I’ve been staring into them all evening because they’re the eyes of a god and the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. But up close like this when you keep your flare at its lowest intensity I can see what gives them their colour. It’s like a flower with a thousand tiny petals of red and blue, and the moment you up the luminosity it’s impossible to tell them apart because their light blends together.”

“Disappointed?” Marlon asks with a sudden sting of insecurity.

Arvid chuckles. “No. Fascinated.”

Marlon relaxes in contentment again. “I wish you were my real dad…” he says wistfully and once again lets himself get caught up in a content, prolonged staring contest with Arvid.

Aiden suddenly sits down next to them and turns to Arvid. “Did Mar tell you Banking Day was his idea? Grandpa just perfected it. Likewise, Mar took Laurent to the doctor and paid for the visit to save his life. Did he tell you that…” Aiden proceeds to rattle off a number of Marlon’s accomplishments before excusing himself to go get drinks at the bar with the same suddenness as he sat down. 

“Is all that true?” Arvid asks.

“Mhm.” Marlon’s pretty sure he’s wearing a smile that is just as dumb as Laurent’s Aiden-smile but he doesn’t care.

“In that case, your parents must be so damned proud of you. I would be, if I was your real dad.” Arvid’s perpetual smile fades and he turns serious, gaze locked with Marlon’s. “Heck, but I am. I’m darn proud of you, Peepers.”

Hearing that makes Marlon stupidly happy. He chirps and burrows his face against Arvid’s chest to hear his heartbeat. He stays like that for a long time, content to quietly listen to the conversation until someone passes out uppers and suggest they hit the dance floor.

* * *

On the way home Aiden’s broody and Marlon’s purring. They don’t speak much. The air is warm and balmy so Marlon’s tied his sweater around his hips, still bare-chested.

“Hey… thanks for distracting Malicia for me,” Aiden says at last. Marlon likes Malicia for the most part. They’d gotten along famously until the first time Aiden came along when she was with Laurent. Malicia and Aiden loathe each other, Aiden because Malicia hates him and Malicia because Laurent moons over Aiden. So at the dance floor tonight Marlon had danced with her a great deal to keep her from getting annoyed by how much Aiden was indulging Laurent’s stupid kitty-crush.

“No problem. Hey, what was that you did, by the way? Sitting down to list all my accomplishments then just hopping away?”

Aiden side-eyes him sourly. “It seemed like you needed it.”

“Needed what?”

Aiden rolls his eyes and looks away, kicking a stone in front of himself while he walks. “I don’t know. I heard you say you wished he was your dad. I hated that. I hate when you talk shit about our family or reject them. Last time mom and dad were home you didn’t even say goodbye. I saw you standing there with that resentful glare and when they asked for you, you disappeared. You know I went to smack you up for making them sad?”

“Lucky thing you didn’t find me or I would h―”

“But I did.”

Marlon abruptly looks away. His gut clenches. Last time his parents were home he couldn’t say goodbye because he felt their departure to the point of physical pain. He’d had to go hide to cry his hecking eyes out.

“I couldn’t go near you because you reeked of pain so badly I had to go throw up,” Aiden continues mercilessly.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Marlon snaps testily.

“Everything, Mar. Here is this stranger who you’ve met only once, years earlier, and you react with the same joy to seeing him again as you do when Michael or Luci come home. You barely listen to anything grandpa says but you hang onto every word coming out of Arvid’s mouth. And he’s dead, Mar. He’s hecking dead. That grin of his is the grin of a skeleton. He’s empty inside and beyond care. Like he said, their Commander walked up to him in that work camp and told him who he was. ‘You’re a mercenary in my company and your mission is to―’. People who’re alive don’t need to be told who they are. And you keep doing that to him too. What the heck, Mar, you don’t tell an O who they’re supposed to be knotted by!”

“I didn’t. I said I was okay with it if he went home with Texas.”

“Still not up to you!”

“Hey! Go hump a cactus! If he had any problems with it he would have said so!” Marlon clearly remembers how much Arvid had liked Joe’s scent last time he was here. He hadn’t wanted Arvid to miss out just because he himself had been so clingy. He was being _considerate_. Aiden doesn’t get that.

They glare at each other for a few steps before Aiden averts his gaze. “It doesn't matter. Arvid's empty. You know with my sense of smell I pick up so much more than most people. You can smell content and I pick up a myriad of other feelings including that annoying, perpetual anxiety and anger of yours. But with Arvid, there's only one feeling at a time. One. I'm not counting physical discomforts like pain. The only time he displayed any nuance is when you didn't respect his wish and forced him to siphon you too instead of just his own secretion.”

Marlon feels like crying. He feels like screaming and punching his brother. “So what? He's empty and I should disregard anything he says? Is that what you're trying to say?” he says bitterly.

“No. That's not―” 

“You don't like him so neither should I?” Marlon guesses with a sneer.

" _No!_ I _do_ like him. It's hard not to since he appears to be so optimistic. I hate that you put him higher than mom and dad but that's something else completely. Will you just quit your sulking and listen to my answer to your question?” Aiden says and waves his hand in annoyance.

Marlon glowers but keeps quiet.

Aiden takes a deep breath before he goes on. “Arvid is dead inside. Beyond care for anything. He knows what he was like when he was human and mimics how he would have acted then and that's it. Except, his men told me they'd delivered the refugees in California and when they got the offer to help repeal the bank law he was ready to take off on foot because he had a friend he wanted to see here in New York. Guess who he was talking about?”

Marlon looks at Aiden then to see an open expression. “He _was_ happy to see me," he says decisively.

“Yes, he was. And he'd talked about you too. Jerry told me―”

"Who's Jerry?” 

Aiden rolls his eyes. "Lichtenstein?”

"Oh. Okay, go on."

“Jerry told me Arvid's been with them for 8 years and never once mentioned anything about how he ended up in that work camp. They knew he was born in Sweden and that he presented at 17 and that's it. Then you do a little soul staring and he's blurting his past.”

Marlon doesn't have an answer for that.

“My point is, he's empty, waiting for someone to fill him up. But everything passes right through him. Except you, for some reason. You told him he’s your dad and he goes ‘I’m a dad now. A really crappy, useless dad. But wow, look at my son! What a marvel!’ And you listen to what he says. To you, everything he says matters. So I figured... “ Aiden sighs. “You know, any time grandpa tells you he’s proud of you, you narrow your eyes and think there’s a catch somehow. But you don’t do that with Arvid so I figured if I told him about things that made grandpa either smell proud or tell you outright, he’d also be proud and tell you that and you’d listen for once and let it sink in. So that’s why I did it. Despite hating how you choose him over us.”

“I don’t choose him over you,” Marlon says, trying not to smile at the bubbly feeling inside.

“No, you do. I blame you for it but I get why. He’s never let you down. Never abandoned you or judged you. You might barely know him and he’s a soldier who is going off to war just like our parents, but he’s never left you. _You_ left him. Even today, you left. You’ve never asked him to stay and gotten a no. _Jinkies_ , Mar, I’ll never forget when you were a kit one time when mom and dad left. You were screaming and crying and fighting like a fiend to get to them. It was a pack effort to stop you and get you to your room.”

“I did? I don’t remember that.”

“Yes, you did. Then you proceeded to cry for four days straight. We could barely get you to drink water and you only slept when you’d exhausted yourself crying only to start right over again when you woke up. When I think about it, maybe it isn’t so strange your last words to dad was to go hump a cactus. You hold a grudge like no one I know.”

“They haven’t been home for two years, Aid,” Marlon points out.

“And why do you think that is? They’re needed at the front. So is Luci and Michael but them you greet like you’re happy to see them, not with blame and loathing.”

“So now it’s my fault they never come home?”

“Yes.” Aiden frowns. “Don’t go get angry about that. You can break our hearts too, you know? We make one mistake with you and you never forgive us.”

“You makes mistakes all the time and I always forgive you,” Marlon retorts.

“O, really? What have I ever done to you? _Athena_ , you’re not still mad about the carrot, are you?” Aiden says with a joking tone.

“I’d forgotten about that, but now that you mention it…” Marlon answers with a snigger. He’d been three and grown a carrot in a pot all by himself and Aiden mistakenly ate it.

Aiden shoves him on the shoulder. He shoves back instigating a playful scuffle that ends with Aiden carrying him on his back while Marlon purrs affectionately against his scalp in complete contentment.

* * *

“Dicky, what are you doing? Don’t interrupt him!” Lucifer protests and pushes at Dick’s shoulder to get him to stop leaning over Marlon since it had made their father stop speaking.

“Whatever you’re doing it’s giving Papa a boner again,” Dean sniggers.

“Fascinating,” Dick says and touches Marlon’s brow gently, staring into his low luminosity flare. “They really are a mix of red and blue. Even more interesting is how close one has to be to see it. You certainly weren’t cuddling like strangers.”

Marlon just smirks contentedly when Dick leans back to retake his position beside Marlon instead of over him.

“This makes me wonder why you didn’t end up mated?” Raff asks. “Did you never meet him after you’d presented?”

Marlon chuckles. “I did, son. And we could very well have ended up mated. We didn’t, but I believe that story is important enough to deserve chronology.”

“How old was Arvid?” Dean asks. “I’m thinking he wasn’t as old as I first pinned him to be.”

“At that meeting he was 14.”

“So 31 years counting from birth. Yeah, okay. I thought he was, like, 35, when you first met him but he was just 26, 27 something. I’m with Raff here. That soul-staring y’all were doing, me an’ Cas did it all the time. Just got stuck watching each other like that. And that was before we presented. With that kind of chemistry, it’s a wonder your brood aren’t mutts, all of them,” Dean states jokingly.

“I wonder why kits didn’t like him?” Mike asks. “In my experience kits tend to like positive people.”

“Aiden had a theory about that,” Marlon says. “Kits are very intuitive. They have yet to learn to rationalise. When we smell someone new, we pick up an undercurrent of emotions under the main ones. For my boy Luci here,” he touches Luci briefly, “Aiden, Jed, and aunt Luci, these emotions are a lot clearer instead of just a faint background noise. But to most of us, it’s noise that we rationalise away as unimportant. Arvid, however, didn’t have this noise. To a kit still trying to make sense of the world, they’d smell that something was off with Arvid even if they wouldn’t know what. A Juvie or adult wouldn’t make note of it since we already rationalise away that noise.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Mike agrees.

“Then why didn’t he put you off when you were a kit?” Luci asks, scrunching up his face in bemusement.

“I don’t know, son. Maybe I already was rationalising.”

“No. I think it’s because you were a fixer,” Dick says. “You saw a problem and you jumped to fix it. Same with your attachment to Laurent.”

“It’s possible,” Marlon agrees.

“Okay,” Luci states. “I know how you tell stories, father. You spent a lot of time describing this meeting in depth. So either Arvid is going to be crucial to something happening in your life, or him showing you how to force someone to siphon, is.”

Marlon narrows his eyes with a catty smile and purrs, smelling so pleased Luci himself purrs in self-satisfaction. Father always liked it when they figured things out on their own.

“Quite right, son. But I wouldn’t end up seeing Arvid again until after I’d presented. And a lot of things happened before that…”

* * *


	14. The Year of Losses pt.1 - The Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the start of a very rough year for the Williams pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter Warning:** Death of a dog! (non-violent)
> 
> Hey all. I'm sorry for going AWOL on you. The beginning of this year's been rough on me. Around the time I disappeared mom was in another country on vacation and had a heart attack. She nearly died and had to be hospitalised over there for weeks before they could fly her home. Then a few weeks ago I nearly lost my dog to illness. It was horrible and I had just finished writing this chapter then, where Marlon's pack loses an old dog. Anyway, be warned that a dog dies in the chapter, but it's also loving, showing that this pack care deeply for their animals.
> 
> Anyway, I've had a couple of rough months and kinda 'shut down', unable to write and unwilling to communicate. But I'm finally back so expect to see more regular updates again. :)

* * *

Grandpa has stopped hounding Marlon and that’s bothering him, so he ends up spending a lot more time around grandpa. Today he’s toting Clara and Portia into Jed’s office to dump them on the bear rug in front of the fireplace burning merrily. The girls squeal with laughter, making Yukon, their old Newfoundland dog, look up from where he’s dosing beside Jed’s desk. Jed smells strongly of fatigue where he’s working writing something on the typewriter, surrounded by bookkeeping books, files, and papers.

He looks up with a tired frown. “Do you have to play in here? I need to concentrate.”

The girls quiet down and sit up looking at their grandpa, Clara winding an arm around Marlon’s leg, licking her lips submissively. Marlon’s not that easily deterred. “Yes, because something, something, fireplace,” he says and points at the fireplace.

Jed raises his eyebrows. “...Something ...something.., fireplace?”

“Mhm,” Marlon nods, lips twitching. Portia giggles and slaps her hands over her mouth to stop the sound from escaping. “You need me to elaborate?” There are many fireplaces in the mansion and several others are burning just as merrily. Marlon will happily come up with some wild, legit sounding explanation, but he thinks not doing so will get the I’m-here-to-annoy-you message across better.

Jed keeps looking questioningly at him for a beat, then he chuckles. “No, no. You’re making a very convincing argument. But could you try to keep it down? I’m doing the quarterly audit before it’s time to hand our books over to government inspection,” he says with a tired smile and makes a go-ahead gesture with his hand.

Marlon holds back a chirp of pleasant surprise. “We’ll try. But you know these buggers won’t let themselves be tickled silently,” he smirks then dives down to attack the two girls with playful tickling. They do try to be quiet, but one or two squeals still escapes between giggles. Then Clara decides Marlon’s a horse and Portia needs riding lessons so Marlon crawls around the room making horse sounds with Portia on his back while Clara is a stern teacher, telling Portia she needs to kick harder with her legs when the horse is lazy and walks too slow. Then Portia wants to braid the horse’s mane so Marlon stands on all fours while the girls stand on either side of him making uneven braids. Jed’s scent shifts, smelling less of fatigue and more of contentment while they play. Then Portia asks “Can you French braid me?”

“Not until I’ve presented and not without help,” Marlon deadpans. 

“I can teach you,” Clara offers while Jed chokes on spittle and tries to withhold laughter with a burst of happiness in his scent. 

“Sure,” Marlon agrees and sits up now that he’s no longer a horse, chancing a glance at Jed to see his grandpa’s shoulders jumping in a silent laugh. Jed catches him looking and mouths a reprimanding ‘ _Mar,_ ’ with a little headshake, but the laughter in his eyes and the twitching lips belies any harshness in the reprimand. Marlon had made the joke solely for Jed. Whether he’d be scolded for it or get a laugh didn’t matter but the outcome makes him purr. The girls don’t get it and they happily proceed to make different hairstyles on each other and Marlon. 

“I wish I had pretty, purple eyes like you,” Clara sighs wistfully when Marlon flares to show how well his newest bracelet matches his eyes. Buying her a whole new set of pretty glass beads had been a sound investment. She now makes him beautiful bracelets and necklaces that he likes to wear for how they look, not solely because he owns them.

“Guess what? They’re not really purple. They’re blue like yours, _and_ red. So in part, we have the same colour. Look closely.” He makes his flare as low luminosity as he can get and puts his face as close to Clara as Arvid had been. “Do you see it?”

Clara frowns. “I don’t see anyth―” She cuts off with a gasp and a look of wonder and excitement. “I see it! I see it!”

“Let me see!” Portia demands and tugs at Clara. Clara almost pokes Marlon in the eye as she points to his eye and bounces in excitement for Portia. “Waaaaoow!” Portia awes as she too sees it.

Marlon sniggers, happy that the girls are suitably impressed. “When I present I’ll be a secret red-eyed Alpha and nobody will know. They’ll all moon over Aiden hoping to have a red-eyed kitling with him and I’ll be sitting there knowing they have an equally great chance with me and they’ll be none the wiser.” He still wishes he could be an Omega but he’s grown to realise that there’s basically no chance of that happening. He grudgingly accepts that he’ll be an Alpha but he isn’t happy about it.

Back by the desk, Jed chuckles. “That’s correct. Our red eyes come from a rare, recessive gene. But your eyes are an even rarer mutation. There are a few who are carriers for this mutation, all stemming from Arkansas, all from a specific bloodline. Sometimes it manifests but we still can’t see it as it manifests blue on blue. But when someone with the genes to pass the mutation along, hooks up with someone who carries a red gene it _can_ produce kits with purple eyes. Most often yellow and blue override the red genes, and green, as rare as they are, almost always trumps red if you’re a carrier for both. But someone with red eyes more easily gets red-eyed offspring, or purple like yours, if they’re carriers for this mutation.”

“From Arkansas? Then why do I have it?”

“Because back in the early 17th century one of your ancestors saw fit to undertake a journey of exploration. He wasn’t an O but he had a roaming soul. We got here from Europe in the late 16th century as a small pack of five - the Alphas Henrí Tessin, Henrik Hansen, Enrique León, and the Omegas Henry and Henny Williams.” Marlon knows this but the girls don't.

The girls giggle. “They’ve all got the same name,” Portia says with mirthfully sparkling eyes. 

“They did,” Jed agrees with a smile. “It’s unclear how they all met because according to the chronicles they came from different parts of Europe. Here we merged with a small pack of natives. They were expert seafolk and provided for themselves as whalers. At the time we met them a stroke of bad luck had made them lose their Omegas so they were only Alphas and kits. Henny got mated to their Patriarch Eleazar and became our first official Main as the Williams pack.”

“What were the other people’s names?” Clara asks.

Jed does an apologetic yikes-expression. “I’m afraid we don’t know. The chronicles from that time were written in old French and have gotten partially destroyed and damaged. And, as I understood it, the European parts of what became our pack had trouble getting their names right so they communicated mostly through Primal means and primal names won't let themselves be written. If we'd try all of us would be named Grrr, Purr, or Chirp.” He pauses when the girls giggle again to smile at them. “However, we know Eleazar and Henny both had red eyes. And we also know Henrí had a roaming soul. He left the pack for several years and when he came home he was mated with Angelina from Arkansas. She had purple eyes and this was found to be fascinating, so a lot was written about it in the chronicles. Today we know a bit more. Not many of the people of her bloodline leave Arkansas. Most were hunters, woodworkers and often lived in smaller packs spread out through the forests. Several packs have traces of this bloodline and once in a while purple eyes will pop up in Arkansas and parts of Oklahoma. Carriers of red genes are more common in Canada even if it rarely manifests, and then there’s the green belt separating Arkansas from us - Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia. People from there can have the red gene necessary to trigger the purple mutation but the green gene masks the red, resulting in yellow, blue, or green eyes.”

“That’s really interesting,” Clara says.

“That’s really confusing,” Portia states.

Marlon agrees with Portia. “I thought morphic species such as us go ‘to heck with it, I do what I want,” he says bemusedly. Genetics, like most biology, confuses and bores him. He knows Jed helped Nina make some school project about genetics before she presented and went off to college. All he paid attention to that was resentfully noting that the ‘R’ beside some of the names in their extensive family tree stands for red eyes. He’d never considered that the ‘BR’ beside his name could be blue/red since to him his flare had always been lilac until Arvid pointed out that it wasn’t.

“True. That’s what makes our genealogy so interesting. Nature is ruled by a set of rules and morphic species will break them more frequently than the static species. We are also more prone to have traits that have been dormant for many generations suddenly spring back into existence. It’s difficult to trace that since not enough packs have had chronicles preserved that date back as far as ours do,” Jed tells them with a smile.

“I don’t get why it matters how anyone looks anyway,” Marlon complains.

Jed’s smile gets broader. “It should interest you, Mar. It’s a vital part of history if you see to the bigger picture. The shape of the world around us shapes the shape of us.”

The very idea of delving into the world of genetics to study history appalls Marlon. “Sure. Right. Shouldn’t you be working, old man?”

“Oh shush. I’m not that old, you twerp,” Jed laughs, but nevertheless returns his attention back to the typewriter and leaves Mar and the girls to continue playing.

When they get tired Marlon puts them on his lap in front of the fireplace and tells them a fairytale that isn’t a fairytale but rather a real-life historical event that he makes out to be about a village of bunnies instead. Clara who professes to hate history loves his fairytales. She’s yet to reach the year in school when she’ll be able to figure out that she knows many of the things they’re supposed to learn because she memorises his fairytales by heart. By now Jed’s purring his Patriarchal all-is-well.

Marlon sends the girls away to go to the kitchen for their evening snack before bed, but sticks around himself. He gets up, undresses down to his underwear, pelts and shifts his face a bit, then gets to all fours to make a play bow in Yukon’s direction, wiggling his ass in mimicry of a wagging tail, whuffing at the old dog. Yukon’s tail begins to thump against the floor. With too much effort the old dog gets to all fours for a much too short play session that leaves him panting in exertion with joints aching. Despite that, he smells happy. Marlon pats the rug beside himself in front of the fireplace and the old dog gratefully folds himself to lie there, rolling on his back to present his belly for scratches. Marlon lies down beside him purring affectionately and devotes a long time to scratching the dog, long after the dog has fallen in contented sleep, Marlon keeps caressing and scratching. One of the household cats slinks into the room to curl herself into a ball between them. Marlon reaches out to snag a bit of Yukon’s slobber on his finger, then puts the finger in his mouth to siphon. It tells him what he already suspected. “Can Yukon sleep in our bed tonight? I don’t think he’ll last ‘til the morning.”

He smells a tendril of sadness lace itself through grandpa’s scent. “Of course. I’ll carry him there.”

“It’s sad to think the youngest kits won’t have a Newfie to help teach them to swim. Are we getting a new one?” Many of his fondest memories of Yukon was from when he was a small kit learning to swim. It makes his heart ache thinking the little ones won’t get to experience that joy and bonding.

Jed puts the ledger he’d been reading down with a sigh. “Not at the moment. It takes a lot of devout training to rear up a puppy to become a rescue dog. All our best animal trainers are at the front and I have too much work. So there’s no one with the instinct and time to do the task,” he says with regret. “Unless you want to do it?”

Marlon thinks about it. He’d love to, but he also thinks he has to be realistic. “I don’t know when I’ll be presenting. I might be going off to college soon…”

Jed sighs again. “Yes. I was thinking the same. I just wish your dad was home so he could say proper goodbyes. Yukon and he used to be inseparable.”

Marlon distantly remembers that. Remembers his dad’s passion for animals and how he’d devoted time to enthusiastically teach them how to best care for all the animals they had. He remembers when the stables were full of horses and grandma taught him to ride. Remembers dad working with the dogs and his mom teaching him how to befriend the cats. But it’s hard work caring for a lot of animals and as the years went by and the war progressed their numbers had dwindled. Old animals died and weren’t replaced. The hunting dogs were sold to people who actively hunted. Some of the horses were sold, others joined the pack at the frontline. They still had the chickens but no longer were any peacocks prancing around the garden and the aviary with exotic birds stood empty. They still have two old horses, three old dogs counting Yukon, and an unknown number of cats. Unknown, because only two had been bought to the household yet there were never less than five roaming indoors. And outdoors? Cats showed up on their grounds like, ‘Hello. I’m Jeff. I live here now and you will feed me. If you handle your cards right I might play with you and perhaps if you’re really lucky I may let you pet me. But don’t count on it, buddy. Just keep the food ready.’ Marlon loves them all. All the cats and all the other animals. Even the aggressive rooster. He no longer cries when they pass away even if he gets sad. The loss of Yukon is going to be felt but the large dog is very old and suffers from aching joints. He hasn’t had the energy to walk far for quite a while and he’s started having shamefaced indoor accidents. They don’t scold him for it just clean it up in silence and they help carrying the large dog up and down stairs or longer distances indoors. Through it all, Yukon always smells happy and content even with the pain. Most likely he’ll die tonight, sleeping between Marlon and Jed with loving hands caressing him, and tomorrow he’ll be burned on the family pyre. It doesn’t mean he’ll necessarily run with their pack in the afterlife. Nobody’s sure if the pets they burn choose to prolong the friendship in the afterlife, but that way they ensure that they cross over without problems and get to go wherever they’re meant to be. 

Marlon lies there petting Yukon for a while longer, letting his hand stray over to continue the caress onto the cat. He watches his grandad go back to work. Jed’s got dark rings under his eyes and looks pale and gloomy. “Can I help you with that?” Marlon asks after a while.

“I don’t know. Can you? I’ve gone through these books,” Jed says and points at one pile then lays his hand on top of another. “These are still not done. Take a look and see if any of it makes sense to you.”

Marlon gets up and leaves the softly snoring behemoth of a dog sleeping with the cat, then chooses a book at random in the middle of the pile. He drags a chair to sit opposite grandpa by the desk and starts reading. The first few pages everything appears in order, but then he starts doubting his math skills. It gives him a sinking feeling in his gut since he dearly wanted to impress his grandad. He drags an empty paper to himself and uses a pencil to do some math. “No… maybe I can’t help. I can’t get to this to make sense at all. I keep coming up short on the third decimal. Guess I’m not as good at accounting math as I thought I was,” he says regretfully.

Jed frowns and looks up from the book he’s auditing. “Let me see.” Marlon hands the book over. Jed’s eyes skim down the side and he starts smelling of excitement. “There’s nothing wrong with your math skills, Mar. This is great!” He looks up with a sheepish kind of smile. “I mean, it’s not great. It looks like somebody’s been skimming, taking very small sums in hope we wouldn’t notice. Either that, or the accountant has been very sloppy and made mistakes but it looks like skimming to me.”

“How? Sums that small can’t be translated into money without a bank transaction and then it’d be traceable.”

“Uh-uh. No. I know this department deals with some cash that comes in on a weekly basis. Now look at the dates and sum up the missing decimals for the day,” Jed says and hands the book over. “They get the money at the end of the week but are meant to note the date for the actual transactions. Then they deposit the money and the amount of cash needs to match what’s in the books. But it's likely that the controller only checks the total against the cash.”

Marlon skims the page doing some head counting, turns the page, skims it, counts, turns the page. For each date the number comes up slightly wrong because a third decimal has been tweaked. It isn’t glaringly obvious because the number is so small, but adding everything together it quickly rises to sums that might be removed in cash. Small change, by all means. But daily small change. The total each day and each week would match the total deposited and the small miscalculation is easily overlooked as the total would seem correct at first or second glance. Maybe if he hadn’t been so set on impressing granddad he’d have rationalised the third decimal as negligible. Now he instead feels the glow of pride warming his chest. “If this isn’t just for a few weeks this will turn into hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars,” he states.

“Mhm,” Jed agrees with an energized smile and hands him a red pen. “Underline any oddities you can find and I’ll take a look at it later to sniff out the culprit.”

They work in companionable silence until Marlon’s eyes feel like they’ll spontaneously start bleeding and he’s stiff and aching. His focus start to waver. “I need to stop now. 3+1 equalling 3 is starting to make sense to me,” he admits.

Jed chuckles, stretches so his joints crack and pop and rubs his tired eyes. “You’re right. A cup of hot cocoa and going to bed probably will do us a lot more use. Thank you for your help tonight.”

Marlon shrug as if it’s no biggie. It is. It’s been fun and he’s felt really useful. What was it Jed said before? He’s doing the job that used to be divided on five people before. No wonder he’s been looking so tired lately.

Jed carries the 154 lbs heavy dog downstairs and out so he can pee and be spared the embarrassment of yet another indoor accident. Then the three of them go to the kitchen where Yukon receives a favourite treat while Jed and Marlon drink a cup of hot cocoa. Jed carries the dog upstairs and lifts him onto the bed. Marlon crawls into bed beside the dog, still pelted since Yukon seems to like it the most when he is. Jed goes to tell two other pack members of the anticipated demise of the dog, making sure that those with the greatest love for the dog can be there with him when he passes. All of them get into bed, hands reaching to pet the shaggy brown dog with his droopy golden eyes. Yukon’s tail keeps thumping after he’s fallen asleep. He whuffs softly in a dream, tendrils of joy in his scent, then… he fades. Marlon keeps petting long after Yukon’s let out his last breath. His is a seeping, heavy type of mourning that lies like a blanket over him. Jed’s pain for the loss is much more acute. He cries and has to be comforted. Marlon wonders if it’s just because of the loss of Yukon or if it’s the ending of a chapter for him, knowing he’ll never again see his oldest son play rambunctiously in the garden with Yukon, that the war has robbed them of too much joy. Or maybe it’s just Marlon projecting. At least the old bear masking as a dog got to die peacefully, feeling loved, tail wagging to the very end.

* * *

It’s the start of a very rough year for the Williams pack.

When Marlon’s mom dies, he feels nothing. Aiden’s mourning but won’t let Marlon comfort him so Marlon stays away while Aiden cosies up to other pack members. Marlon cares more for the kits who aren’t sad about his mom since they didn’t know her very well. And maybe it’s why Aiden doesn’t want Marlon around. He needs people around who can feel what he feels to mourn with him. (“I’m sorry you’re sorry mom died,” apparently wasn’t the right thing to say.) So Marlon cares for the kits and pets and stays up writing on his new project - a history book from Packrunner point of view summarizing all he's learned from his ever-growing collection of books. He goes out to party on Fridays after school. That’s the only day he allows himself since the writing is constantly calling. He’s fine. He’s done crying for his parents. Yukon’s departure feels worse even though it was anticipated. Then one Friday when he’s at the Sanctuary, drunk but not high, someone who’d joined him and his friends on the couch in the back asks him why he’s so broody. He doesn’t think he’s broody, but fine. “I lost my dog.”

The unsuspecting person looks at him with genuine sympathy and with a troubled expression asks, “Oh no. Do you have something else to eat?”

It takes Marlon three whole seconds to get what losing a dog and getting food has to do with each other. After that, everything goes red. No matter how much he tries he can’t remember what happens between that moment and when he’s at home eating breakfast in the morning. He has to be retold by his friends next time he sees them and several remain wary around him. The guy never stood a chance. And when they tried to pull him off what was left of the guy he turned on them with no trace of recognition in his eyes. Luckily Texas Joe decked him out from behind. It’s a miracle he’s still welcome at the club. He tries to tell himself he doesn’t care about any of that, but in reality it scares him. Especially the lack of memory of turning on his friends. He nonchalantly brings it up to Aiden one day. “Hey, so… I was really drunk and got into a fight. But I can’t remember any of it. It’s just black until I got home.” Aiden waves it off with that it isn’t unusual to have blackouts when you drink too much and tells him not to drink that much next time. Marlon shrugs his agreement. He thinks it’s more too it but doesn’t delve into the severity of the issue. Aiden has enough on his plate as it is.

* * *

Marlon’s pissed off again. It feels like that’s been his constant state the whole summer through. He’s looking at the big fence surrounding the complex. Concrete reaching to his hips with tall iron bars that end high above in spikes and barbed wire. On Monday, he’ll get an ID that will let him pass in and out here. On the inside there are a couple of high rises, a general store, a building with who knows what and another big building that will be his new school. He doesn't get it. He genuinely thought grandpa would be proud. He'd been working on that book for months, arranged to have it printed and distributed and paid for it all with the money in his own account. (The bank law had been repealed but they still got to keep their personal bank account as well as Jed had them listed as co-owners of the pack assets.) Yet grandpa had called him into his office and punished him. He hadn’t said it was a punishment, but it must be.

Maybe it wasn’t about the book? Maybe it was about how he'd aggressively marked up every empty room in the house the other day and then still went to sleep in grandpa's wardrobe? Honestly, he has no idea.

“What the heck are you staring at, dummy?" someone shouts.

Unwittingly, he'd been staring at a girl his own age that's leaning against the building he'd been looking at. He hadn't been looking at her, not on purpose any way. But he takes offense at being called dummy. He flares, teeths his canines and saunters to the fence with a smirk. “Zoo was closed so I thought, where else can I look at animals behind bars?” he says and leans his forearm across the bars nonchalantly.

She pushes herself away from the wall and comes closer but stops 20 yards away. He can smell her anger. “I'm no animal. _You_ are, sniffler."

“And yet you are the one living behind bars to be gawked at,” he deadpans. "What's up with that anyway? And while we're at it, how did your eyes get like that? They're really pretty.” Her eyes are light blue like his own when he isn't flaring. But despite having a pale complexion and blond hair her eyes are ringed by black. He'd seen a few other Progs with pretty eyes like that but only from a distance and nothing made Progs run as fast as when you took aim at them and approached them at a brisk pace. They’re more skittish than wild deer.

“Take a long hike on a short pier and never come back here, will you?” the girl answers with a sneer.

Marlon does a half-drop of his fangs and mock-leers at her, enjoying the souring of fear in her anger. Then he shrugs and turns to jump up on the broad concrete base of the fence. He sits with his back turned to her like he would act towards a dog that is aggressive out of fear behind a fence. “Believe me, I would gladly stay away. But from tomorrow I’ll be locked up inside with you a couple of days each week. The decision is above my pay grade.”

“You’re the Primal that’s starting in our class?”

He snorts and pats his pockets. “Guess I am.” He finds his pack of cigarettes and takes it out along with his lighter. It irks him that they’ve already been informed a Primal is starting in their school. It sets him up for bullying and blackballing. Even if everyone treats him well enough it will still prevent him from trying to adapt his behaviour and blend in. He taps two cigs out, lights one and holds the other up over his shoulder. “You want one?”

“In exchange for what?” the girl asks suspiciously.

He looks over his shoulder to see she’s come a couple of steps closer. He gives her a flat look. “I asked two questions. You can answer them for starters.” 

“What questions?”

“Why are your eyes so pretty and why you’ve chosen to move into a prison free-willingly?”

“What do you mean, ‘why are they pretty’?” she counters with narrowed eyes.

Marlon pelts solely under and around his eyes to give them a ring of black with a lighter line underneath.

The girl gasps, eyes going wide and scent shifting into excitement. She takes a few strides closer before she remembers he’s a ‘scary Primal’. She smells weird. She smells like lavender. It’s not unpleasant but humans shouldn’t smell like flowers. “How did you do that?” she asks.

His lips hook in a lopsided smirk and he takes a drag on his cig before he answers. “It’s fur. But Progs don’t pelt, so why are some Progs I see pretty around the eyes. Is it a bloodline thing?”

She sniggers and shakes her head. “It’s makeup, dummy.”

“Riiight... Makeup. I know all there is about makeup. Yes, I do. The word makes absolute sense to me and I’ve heard it often. In fact, it’s all me and my friends talk about,” Marlon answers sarcastically and turns his head to face forward again, away from her.

It get a giggle from her and the hostility in her scent lessening.

He holds up the cigarette over his shoulder again without looking at her, taking a drag on his own cig with the other hand. He both hears and smells her coming closer. She sits down on the concrete base next to him and takes the offered cig, then Marlon twists to sit sideways and lights it for her through the bars separating them. “Thanks. Makeup is paint, I guess you can say,” she says after having taken a drag on the cig and let the smoke out.

He studies her face and scents continuously. “Is that why your face smells weird?” That gets him a deep, insulted frown. “I said weird, not bad. It’s pleasant enough. I’m not to keen on the lavender olive oil you’ve got on you, though. It makes it hard to smell what’s you. But your eyes look darn hecking pretty. Why do you paint yourself?”

She regards him with a look between bemusement and amusement while inhaling another lungful of smoke. “Every girl wants to be darn hecking pretty,” she answers at last.

“But with all the scented stuff you’ve covered yourself with it’s really hard to smell if you’re pretty or not,” Marlon remarks and gets a snigger in response.

“You’re weird,” she says.

He makes a disgruntled chirp and turns away to sit leaned with his back against the bars again, looking straight forward. He can feel her watching but ignores her.

“You haven’t presented yet. Why do you wear skirts?” she asks after a moment of not-quite companionable silence that still manages not to be awkward.

He turns his head to look at her. “They flare prettily when I dance. Watch.” He jumps down from the ledge, takes a few steps to get space and twirls several laps so the flighty fabric of his skirts stand out like a rainbow rose around him, each skirt a different colour with the longest one being the outer one to hide the rainbow within when he’s not dancing. He goes back to sit on the concrete ledge, enjoying the almost friendly smile he gets from her.

“I’ve always wondered why unpresented Primals wear skirts,” she states.

“Grandpa calls it peacocking. You wear colourful or otherwise eye-grabbing clothing to catch the interest of a potential mate or some crap like that. It gives you an edge against competition that has the same appeal and strengths as you. I don’t plan on ever getting mated but I like to catch people’s attention. Aside from that skirts are worthless to crawl in.”

“I guess I can see that.” She reaches through the bars to catch one of his corkscrew locks on her finger and bounce it a bit. “Did you use a curling iron or is it naturally like that?” she asks and pulls her hand back.

“I get them when I let my hair dry without combing it. I just need to detangle it before i get out of bath and it does the rest all by itself. Only the tips though. When I was a kit all my hair looked like that but as I got older it got darker and straighter.”

“Same. When I was a kit I had wavy locks but now it’s straight.”

“Can you make my eyes pretty like yours?” Marlon asks. Whether her hair looked like that when she was a kit is of zero interest of his, but her eyes are truly beautifully painted.

“Sure.” She shifts to dig in the purse she’s had hanging in a shoulder strap and takes out a bunch of small jars, a colour palette, pencils, brushes, and tubes. “This is mascara, for the eye lashes, and you use this brush to apply it. And this pencil is for under your eyes. And you can use this to get my sooty look. _Or_ , if you want, you can use this palette and choose a colour for your eyelids to match your clothes or eyes. You've got scars and some redness to your skin. You can use this to cover it up. First with this cream, then this powder, and some rogue to accentuate your cheekbones,” the girl rattles off in rapid fire.

Marlon wrinkles his nose in bemusement. “I love my scars. They show I’ve healed. Why would I want to cover them up? And the redness is from the sun. Nothing wrong to let people see and smell that I get fresh air.” He picks up the cream to sniff it, then opens the powder jar. “This is the crap that makes your face smell funny. You’re covering up your glands and this messes with the scent. No thanks.” He puts it down and picks up the mascara to sniff. “Vaseline jelly and coal. I can go for this.” He proceeds to pick up each item to sniff while the girl wrinkles her nose in the same bemusement he’d felt when she gave him an explanation.

“You really are a weirdo,” she states.

He huffs. “Takes one to know one. All the black items have a coal base and won’t interfere with my scent too much. Will you help me apply them?”

She perks up. “Okay.” She takes a last drag on the cigarette and drops it on the ground to kill the cherry with her shoe. 

Marlon flicks his own cig away, puts his head against the bars and she starts painting his eyes in the same style her own eyes are fixed. He'd warn her that if she hurt him a fence would do little to keep her safe, but she smells happy, excited and content. She's enjoying herself with no signs of hostility so he keeps quiet. Warning her when she bears no ill intent would only insult her. Instead, he purrs. It makes her giggle and shake her head, still intent on what she's doing.

“Like petting a big cat," she mutters, amused.

“Basically, that's what we all are. Advanced wolfcats," he agrees. "So why have you and other Progs moved to these gated communities?” he asks. "I could understand if it was only to protect your homes, but you've walled yourselves off in tiny villages within the city and some of you never leave.”

A bit of anger and fear enter her scent. “Because that Union filth call themselves Progressives. They are _nothing_ like us but your kind can't tell the difference. You just hear Progressive and lump us together with that garbage.”

"Huh. I guess,” he admits. “So you have to take the hate meant for them and it gets very dangerous for you to walk down the street. Alright. I get it. But would you mind telling me what the difference is? For me it's like, yes, you're Progs but you're _our_ Progs, hence you need to be protected like the rest of us. So educate me.”

“Um. It's like… both of us claim to stand for equality. But we think everyone is equal, while they say everyone is equal and therefore should have exactly the same. Picture a village where one villager has lost his legs. The village has one wheelchair. According to the Union all the villagers _must_ share the wheelchair and have it one day each. During the days someone else has the wheelchair the leg-less villager is bedridden. That’s _not_ equality. Or someone is allergic to some type of food, like nuts, but still everyone gets the same amount of everything, including nuts. So the day they hand out nuts he or she don’t get to eat or risk dying. They have to hand in everything they produce to be redistributed by their government. Farmers hand in their whole crop and get the seeds back they’re supposed to grow and so on.”

“Is there an upside to their system?”

The girl makes a discontent grimace. “They say that Union led countries have zero percent unemployment, no homelessness, and every single person is guaranteed to get to eat.”

“And the tradeoff is nobody is allowed to think for themselves, have hobbies, and stray from their assigned path? No thanks. I’d rather be homeless, unemployed and starving.”

“Exactly. But they have harsh punishments and a reward system, making everyone spy on each other. It’s extremely hard to rebel. And you can only read books and news the government approves of. Any signs of rebellion and you and your whole family might be sent to the labour camps and we all know how _that_ ends.”

“Nothing incenses me like censorship,” Marlon says. “Nobody’s allowed to tell me what I’m to read or write.”

The girl shrugs. “Well, they need to control the public somehow. How else are they going to do it if the people are literate and educated?”

It feels like Marlon’s having an epiphany at that, except the thought is not formed enough for him to grasp what he’s realising. “So how do you differ from them?” he asks instead.

She scoffs, looking and smelling incredibly insulted. “Are you seriously comparing me to them?”

“Meh. A Prog is a Prog. Except you’re telling me they aren’t. So I’m asking you to clarify. _Educate_ me. Don’t go acting high and mighty because I don’t know what nobody’s ever told me before. I’m here. I’m listening, aren’t I?” 

She lowers her brush with a grumpy expression. “Alright. I just think you all should be finding these things out for yourself, not pleading ignorance when you kill one of us for the sin of going to the store to get groceries.”

“What do you think I’m doing by asking you? I’m finding out. If you don’t want to tell me who you are and what your strife is about, then how do you expect us to give a crap? It’s not exactly as if people are handing out pamphlets at every street corner. If you refuse to talk to us all I have to go on is when you shout insults and call us animals, snifflers, or Packrunning garbage. As a kit I didn’t even think you were capable of feelings like compassion, love, and empathy. I’m pretty certain you are, now. But I still harbour some skepticism. Personally, though, I don’t take offense to being called an animal. We all are animals, evolved to fill different nichés in the world. I’ve grown up with animals and know how loving and smart and unique every individual and species are. But I haven’t grown up with Progs like yourself and I’m about to be forced into interacting with you until I present and go off to college. So please tell me why I should judge you differently than Union Progs?” Marlon says calmly, face still pressed to the bars and relaxed in his body.

The girls scent had been shifting wildly while he talked but landed at a fairly content. “Okay. I guess you’re right. I mean, what we know about Primals is that you’re violent and unpredictable. So, um. We believe in equality in that every person holds equal value and have equal rights to live a good life. But we don’t believe everyone is or should be the same because we believe everyone is an individual with different needs and wants. Some people want to be super rich and work their hide off to get there, while other are content if they just can provide for their family and have comforts. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Just like there’s nothing wrong with spending your life painting even if you’re strong enough to work in a field. In the Union they test people’s abilities and decide for you. What we have in common is that we often live in communities where we share what we have. But we don’t force everyone to contribute equally. Like that man in the wheelchair. He’d still be taken care of even if he can’t do much.”

“Like in a pack?”

“ _No_.” The girl leans back with an insulted frown. Then her face smooths out and she shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t know any Packrunners,” she admits. “But, um, I do know that you go a lot on instinct and we try not to, since it clouds judgement. So we try not to use our morph-abilities in hope that they’ll go dormant.”

“You stunt yourself on purpose?” The thought is baffling.

“We don’t see it that way. We see it as removing the handicaps brought on by being a morphic species. Like, you guys can go nuts for a scent. You fall in love with someone’s scent and then you’re blind to any wrongdoings against you by that person. And you guys suffer much more than us from bond loss, Heats and Ruts. Stuff like that. But…” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly then speaks as if she doesn’t want to admit this, “I’ve heard that almost everyone who converts to be Progressive are Packrunners, and that Progressives have a lot easier than others to convert to Packrunning. So maybe we aren’t _that_ different.” She perks up. “Although we don’t believe in the difference between genders you do. Like Conservatives think Alphas are better and Primals think Omegas are better. To us, the person, not the gender, proves one’s worth.”

* * *

“How, how, _how_ did you not realise what Jed wanted from you after this conversation?” Dean asks.

Dick chuckles. “Dean, dear, I seem to remember you reacting very averse when you found out Charlene is a Prog.”

Dean hunkers down shamefully. "Yeah, okay. But still."

“Son, I listened to everything Penny, which was her name, told me. But I couldn't get past the way Progs self-stunted. If it was just Penny and me having conversations the lesson might have stuck a lot faster. But the day after I started school in there and prejudice festered on both sides.”

"Was Penny the girl you fell in love with?” Raff asks. Luci starts to wonder if Raff perhaps is a secret romantic underneath it all. He might have hidden that in fear of never getting a mate. Now he has two and is free to indulge openly without being pitied.

Marlon laughs. "Heck no! We became what you youngsters call frenemies. We shared an interest in clothes and makeup, and occasionally we had rather deep discussions. But that was the extent of it. Although, incidentally, it was the same week I met my first love. To this day I remember her to be the most beautiful girl in existence. She barely spoke a word of English but that didn't deter me. And that is also how I learned that there are more designations than the three we usually divide people in.”

"What? No way. Look, buddy, I've been to school. Only three designations are mentioned in any class, on TV, or in any book I've ever read,” Dean protests.

"That was my first reaction too,” Marlon agrees. "But think about it. What we call designations are mostly a cultural phenomenon. Conservatives are deemed a designation of their own and they are basically Primals of a certain religion. It's the values we adhere to that dictates our designation and due to how we live our bodies change to fit. And as I understand, for many people who convert the body often change to fit the new requirements. The exception are Progs who have self-stunted for several generations to the point of becoming static instead of morphic.”

"That's what social biology is about,” Mike fills in. "And when you consider how vast and diverse the world is then I suppose there would be other designations.”

"Exactly. To explain it we often try to fit them into our three pre-existing categories or we mix and match. Progressive Packrunners we called the designation of my first love because they lived in a pack-like way and held several Primal traits. Or we say lenient Conservative about non-religious people with mostly Conservative values.”

"This is making my head hurt,” Dean complains.

"It wouldn't work to suddenly introduce several new designations. People don't like to get what they believe themselves to know as hard facts, refuted,” Raff states.

"I'm well aware,” Marlon sighs. "And it's not a battle I'm willing to fight. Only if Packrunning needs to be rebranded would I engage myself. For a while we considered if we would have to rename our designation. Then we signed the deal that started the greatest cover-up in recent history. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. You asked about my first love? I met her after school one day…”

* * *


	15. The Year of Losses pt.2 - Enkosi, Nceba

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon falls in love for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, we meet a fourth designation. It will never be named. Like Marlon's told Dean & Co we'd just call them Packrunning Progs. They aren't. In a large area where these people come from the cultural and societal development have separated them too much from both Progressives and Packrunners despite great likenesses to both. I'm not delving deeply into the differences or how it impacts their bodies or customs.  
> Oh, and to clarify, the ceremony we'll see is an O's first knotting, not a marriage. And it's her choice to go through with it that way. I think Dean would have chosen that too if our boys had rituals like this, but Sam might have been hesitant to do it. What is your take on that? I'm also super curious about what other ceremonies they might have. Like, is there a ritual for Alphas too? What might that look like? Do they have ceremonies for other stages in life too? Are they more prone to celebrations in general? So many questions I'd love to get answered but won't delve into. xD

* * *

He's dragging his feet walking through old town on his way home. He's taken an upper in an attempt to get rid of his bad mood. School is horrible. The only upside is that the biology book is half as thick as his old one. The downside is that it's the interesting stuff that's missing. There's literally only one page about scent bonding instead of 7 chapters. His classmates aren't actively bullying him but they barely speak to him. They don’t avoid him per se, but they try not to interact with him if they don't have to. Even Penny is standoffish unless he manages to get her alone. On top of it all, there's a guy named Keith who’s two years older than him and is like Aiden - perfect. Tall, broad-shouldered, strong, fit, charming, smart, quick-witted and popular. Keith isn't afraid of him because he's a Primal. If you teeth at him he goes 'Watch so you don't cut your lower lip on those, Chompers,’ and _winks_ and smells _good_ and smiles and pats your shoulder when walking away. Marlon hates him and likes him and hates that he likes him. If it wasn't for Keith Marlon might not have been going to school at all. But he has this drive to put Keith in place (since the guy isn't responding to friendly overtures very well).

Suddenly he catches wind of the most beautiful scent he's ever smelt. A few steps in the direction it's coming from and Marlon's forgotten any plans of going home. The scent belongs to a Juvie in the first stages of presenting as an Omega. He tracks the scent down through the slums, scent steadily getting stronger. Then he hears a girl scream and plea-curse at a man who’s threatening her to let go or he will hurt her. Marlon doesn’t understand the language the girl is using but both pleas and curses have an universal tone. He quickens his step and starts running when the scent he’s following is close enough to discern emotion, carrying distress. He turns a corner to see a girl on the verge of adulthood holding on to a big wicker basket that a big man down on his luck is trying to pull from her, fruits and vegetables spilling everywhere. 

Marlon flares, drops fangs and claws, and roars in an enraged challenge at the would-be thief.

The man takes one gauging look at him, starts smelling distressed, lets go of the basket and takes off running.

The girl stumbles and falls backwards when he lets go and when she sees Marlon the distress in her scent turns to pure terror. The girl scrambles to her feet and backs up a step, torn between wanting to run and to stay to retrieve her food.

Marlon quickly withdraws his claws and holds up his hands disarmingly hunkering down a bit, licking his lips. “No, no, no. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m just trying to help. I want to help you.” He underlines his words by adding a soothing purr from his breastbone.

The fear in her scent had gone down a notch but as soon as he starts purring it goes up again.

_Lovely. Another Prog._ Had she been a Conservative or Primal she would have recognized the purring and lip-licking. He hasn't seen her try to scent his way either which is another clue.

Marlon quickly stops flaring and withdraws his fangs. “I'm not dangerous. I want to help you," he assures her. When she shows no outward reaction to his words he remembers he'd heard her speak a foreign language so he tries to repeat himself in intermediate French and then abysmally bad Spanish. When that still doesn't get a reaction except the fear going down somewhat during his babbling he drops to his knees shoving his skirt-hems into his belt, grabs an apple from the ground and crawls towards her crouched low face near the ground not looking directly at her while holding up the apple to her. It's the most submissive position he can manage.

It works. The fear is traded for general anxiety. Her scent without the souring of fear truly is the most enchanting he's ever smelt. It makes his heart beat erratically and his belly flip-flop. He slowly looks up not to spook her, finally getting a good look at her. She's a Juvie but with the Omega marker meaning she's in the process of presenting. She's wearing a colourful, boldly patterned piece of cloth wrapped around her like a dress and tied off behind her neck. Her face is heart shaped with marked, rounded cheekbones, broad lips with a very full lower lip, dark eyes like the sea lit by the moon at night and the cutest button nose with wide nostrils. He loves her hair. Frizzy curls that stand out like a dandelion puff-ball.

He smiles tentatively at her. “I'm a friend. I want to help you." 

“Fffrend?” she says with a strange pronunciation.

“Yes. Friend. Help you.” He nods, smiling wider. He’s not the lying kind but never has anything been so true. One whiff of this girl and he already know he wants to be friends forever with her. He wants to know everything about her and wants her to know everything about him. He wants to make her happy and to be there for her when she’s sad. He wants _everything_ with her for the rest of their lives. (Except for that penis poking stuff because it’s gross and sticky.)

She hesitantly takes the apple with an even more hesitant smile.

He barely withholds a yip of delight. You never know what might spook a Prog. Instead, he beams at her then crawls backwards to retrieve another fallen fruit to throw into the basket on the ground.

It gets him another smile with less anxiety in her scent. He carefully gets to his feet with deliberate, slow movements and chances turning his back on her to go pick up a vegetable, then he goes to put it in the basket while looking at her with an open and friendly expression. She finally relaxes and starts picking up spilled produce too. They help out, trading glances and smiles whenever their eyes meet. When everything is back in the basket Marlon says “I’ll help you carry it. I’ll help,” and flexes his arms comically to show how strong he is, points at himself, points at the basket mimics carrying it without picking it up (It’s hers and he doesn’t want her to think he’s trying to steal it.), points at her and then does a pantomime of following her. When she giggles he feels like he could float and live on that giggle and nothing else for a month. She says something in a strange language with click and clop sounds. He must look like a complete question mark because she giggles again. Then she says “Enkosi.” 

He lifts the basket and repeats “Enkosi?” back to her like a question only to give her a smile rivaling Laurent’s stupid Aiden-smile when she giggles and looks at him like he’s both stupid and cute at the same time. She keeps eye-contact with him as she turns and takes one step in the direction from him, smelling a bit uncertain, then relaxes when he immediately follows.

He walks slightly behind her and to the side of her and anytime their eyes meet they smile at each other. Nothing else exists or is important in the world. Normally, he might have blamed the uppers but this is more than that. This is everything anyone could ever want from life. “I’m Marlon,” he says after a while of silence. She looks at him questioningly. He pats his chest. “Marlon.”

“Molloh?”

“Mar-lon.”

“Moh-lloh.”

Close enough. If she wants to call him Molloh then he’ll be Molloh. He smiles widely.

She taps her chest and says, “Nceba.”

“Nceba,” he repeats, getting the pronunciation right. The smile he gets in return is radiant.

He follows her down to one of the big, cobbled squares in the slum docks. It’s been a while since he’s been here because they no longer have markets here since the houses around it were destroyed by the bombings. In his absence, the square has been taken over by foreign refugees. They’ve set up camp along the sides of the square in groups with a clear unclaimed buffer zone between each group. In the middle of the square lone refugees or couples have made their camps using one of several cooking fires communally while the groups (packs?) have their own fires. The groups are all in the process of making the ruins they’ve claimed habitable as homes. On the opposite side of where they’re heading he pins down a group as a definite pack of Alphas due to how incessantly they’ve marked up their area and part of the building. They’ve even got two small but sturdy horses and have made the most sheltered and room-like part of the house ruin into a stable. Marlon even spots three dogs moving around in the group. He’d warn them about keeping dogs in the slums but judging by their stern faces, sabres and boot daggers these guys are well aware. He decides he likes them.

On the opposite side, where they’re heading, there are three groups working on repairs of the same building. They’re all dressed in similar clothes as Nceba and there is some friendly back and forth going on between the groups but judging by body language and the sounds of their language they might not be from the same region.

As they get closer an older man frees himself from the group and comes walking towards them. He calls out to Nceba and she answers something Marlon doesn't understand. He can smell the man's hostility. He also smells closely related to Nceba. By the age Marlon guesses him to be her father or uncle.

As the man approaches Nceba turns to Marlon and takes the basket from him with a smile. “Enkosi, Molloh," she says.

“Enkosi, Nceba,” he answers. He knows he probably is using that word wrong because she giggles as she walks away, looking amusedly over her shoulder at him.

“You! Go away!” Her father blocks the view between Marlon and Nceba. He does not look happy.

“I’m a friend. I just want to help. Please. I’m a friend,” Marlon pleads to the shorter man who stops sternly in front of him. 

Her dad grabs his cheeks roughly and pulls his face closer to look into his eyes. “No good. Drogg boy, no good. Go away.” He lets go and makes a shooing motion.

“Drugs? I can stop. Please, I just want to be friends with her. Look,” Marlon says and takes a little tin box from his pocket that used to contain mint pastilles. He opens it for her dad to see. “See? My drugs.” He closes the lid, turns, and hurls the little candy box as far as he can sailing over the square and into the ocean. He turns back to her dad. “Now it’s gone. I won’t do any more. Just let me be friends with her.”

“Nceba, ngubani lo mfana?” a big, elderly woman who sits on a bench leaned against a piece of intact wall asks while looking at Nceba. The woman smells of pain and prosperity and is also related to Nceba. Grandmother perhaps? Either way, it makes Nceba’s father turn to listen to Nceba’s answer. Nceba retells their meeting with body-language so vivid even Marlon can follow along. As she speaks rapid-fire she mimics a tug war then Marlon’s appearance with growling noises and monster-like gestures, then curls herself down to mimic him come crawling holding up the apple. Marlon finds himself smiling at her direction like a doofus, belly flip-flopping when he hears ‘Molloh’ in the story. The elderly woman nods, turns to ask Nceba’s dad something. He answers while pointing at Marlon’s eyes. She nods and says something.

Nceba’s dad turns back to him. “You go now. You come back other day. No drogg. Maybe can be fffrend. Today, no. Go now.”

“Okay. Thank you, Sir. I won’t touch drugs as long as I can be friends with her and help you out. Thank you,” he says and bows his way backwards. He catches Nceba’s eyes and raises his hand to wave at her. “Bye, Nceba.”

She waves back with yet another beautiful smile. “Usale, Molloh.”

Marlon leaves, but he doesn’t go far. Instead, he goes to the other side of the square where the pack with the animals has set up camp. He flares and makes a friendly noise as he approaches. One of the Alphas flare and comes to meet him, making a challenging but non-threatening rumble as he comes closer. Marlon stops, licks his lips and tips his head to the side to invite an introduction. Since he’s here to make friends in the capacity of himself, not in official pack-business he doesn’t have to square up with anyone like he’d done with Laurent at their first meeting. The friendly overture is accepted and the Alpha comes to scent him then offers his own neck. “Any of you speak English?” Marlon asks after having met the guy properly.

The Alpha turns to call out to another one of the Alphas. “Vlad!” Then gesures for the guy to come over. After yet another scenting, the new guy asks “Vatt you vant?” It’s the in Marlon needs. Packrunners are easy no matter where they’re from because words in languages you don’t know can in many cases be replaced by the Primal language to be understood. Primal communication isn’t as detailed as spoken languages so a discussion might be rumbled, purred and chirped interspersed with words like ‘East Street’, ‘cheap cheese’, ‘ferry fees’, ‘5 cents’ and so on. Marlon warns them about the risks of keeping dogs in this area and strikes up a conversation about Yukon and the other dogs owned by the Williams pack. It soon goes on to horses and other topics. Marlon offers to help them get oriented and which packs to make friends with and so on. And, _voilá_ , he gets himself invited to their camp where he can keep an eye on Nceba’s group from a distance. He gets to meet their animals and while they regard him suspiciously at first his obvious experience and enjoyment interacting with animals make them relax. As dusk falls people that had been out in the city start returning to the various camps and he’s invited to share food with the Alpha pack. He’s shocked to find out they’ve fled from the USPR. They’re from the Union which is mindblowing because if there’s one thing everyone knows about USPR is that there are no Packrunners in Soviet. “Propaganda,” Vlad tells him. “Our existence is denied. Ve’re hunted down and made to vork until die. Is no good. Ve flee for freedom.”

At the same time, he studies Nceba’s group and is equally baffled by what he sees. Penny had told him Progs don’t put stock in gender and everyone is equal. At school, he himself had seen how rank is determined by wealth, looks, and prowess. But Nceba’s group communicate like Progs, not using any Primal traits, but their dynamic is unmistakenly Packrunning. The grandmother is the Main, all the Alphas are related while the Omegas aren’t. The Os are treated with subtle deference and there’s a clear hierarchy in the group.

When the sun has set and it’s getting late, something magical happens. People gather around the fires and take out instruments, some start singing and others dance. The USPR Packrunners are no different. They play drums, sing, and dance. Among other things, they have this dance move when they squat low with their arms crossed over their chests and kick out repeatedly. Naturally, Marlon has to try. It’s ridiculously hard and even though Marlon is fit, it strains his thighs to the point where he nearly feels like crying. He keeps losing his balance falling backwards. The Alphas laugh at him. “You stop nov or you not valk tomorrov,” Vlad says with an amused smirk. Marlon tells him to go hump a cactus and keeps trying to get it right until exhaustion finally gets him and he has to sit down. He wakes up confused and disoriented with no memory of falling asleep. He’s bedded down on soft reindeer furs between Vlad and another Alpha bracketing him in a way that feels protective. They’re inside the makeshift stable and the horses are lying down on either side of them. One horse lifts its head to blink sleepily at him when he sits up. He reaches out to pet it reassuringly on the forehead and then gets up with legs screaming in protest. It hurts and he knows it'll get worse before the day is over. Vlad wakes up and sleepily asks “ _Mrrt?_ "

“The sun is rising. I need to get ready for school."

Vlad smells pleased. "School is good. Ask Mikhail. He give breakfast."

“Thanks. How did I get in here?”

Vlad chuckles. "Andrei carry you. You big and heavy."

Marlon smirks, makes a small sound of goodbye and limps out of the stable to seek out Mikhail for the promised breakfast.

It's a very intense period for Marlon. Every day he goes from school to buy things for both Nceba's and the Alphas’ packs. Necessities mostly. He starts with food because everyone has to eat. To get close to Nceba's pack he uses very submissive body language and aims his efforts towards the grandma and dad when presenting his gifts. The first few days he isn't chased off but he isn't allowed to come close either. So he uses an empty crate as a perch and sticks around for a glimpse of Nceba and the gorgeous smile she bestows on him every time their eyes meet. Then he remembers that Keith did this or that better than him in class and goes to the Alpha pack to do his homework. One of the Alphas will join him by the makeshift table to read or write something. They're all literate but not in English. He soon learns their pack name is Volkovs.

Three days of coming down to leave food for Nceba's group and sticking around to pine for her finally rewards him with tolerance.

“Molloh!" Her father calls out from where he is erecting a new wall on the bottom floor of the bombed out building bordering the square by their camp. “Help here!"

Marlon jumps off his perch and hurries over. It's the opening he's been waiting for. Once he starts helping with the building Nceba's family warms up to him. During the evening he is offered to eat with them and sits beside Nceba chatting as well as he can. Their discussions are more pantomimed than spoken but it works and is well worth it for her laughter and the twinkle in her eyes. The food is an experience too. Instead of plates, they use a flatbread and the seasoning of the stew is unfamiliar. Marlon can’t decide if he likes it or not but he eats, grateful for the hospitality.

When it's getting late her father tells him to go so Marlon trots right over to the Alphas. It continues like that. Sleeping with the Alpha pack, going to school showering in the school changing rooms before class, studying hard trying to outdo Keith in whatever is put to them to do, then off into the city to shop what he thinks the Alphas, and Nceba’s group need (including buying new clothes for himself since he needs to change clothes now and then), as well as buying them presents he doesn’t think they need like jewelry and other knick-knacks. Then to the Alphas to do homework and help out with the animals if needed and finally skipping over the square to see Nceba. Some days are filled with hard construction work, others he gets to be the guide to the city. In the evening he eats with either the Alphas or Nceba then either chat in camp or wander around the square together with his new friends to meet other people, listen to the music and dance new dances. He’s constantly in pain from the construction work and all the new dance moves but it doesn’t bother him because how impressed Nceba looks when he does well. Her smile drives his engine every day. The war has never seemed so far off.

Of course, it can’t last.

There’s a young Alpha in the group next to Nceba’s group. He is 2 or 3 years old maximum and Marlon thinks he’s born circa 20 years ago. He’s taken a fancy to Nceba and courts her carefully. He’s kindhearted, lean and strong and makes Nceba smile so Marlon allows it. As long as Nceba’s happy, Marlon is too. Kwame, the young Alpha, includes Marlon in any activity he invites Nceba to, and Marlon likes him despite him being a Prog. Kwame and his group aren’t fazed by Primal behaviours like Nceba’s group are either. They will even occasionally flare as part of their own conversations. Marlon comes to consider Kwame an actual friend. But then what had to happen happens, and Nceba presents. Marlon feels stupid not foreseeing the consequence of that. Kwame translates for Marlon with very limited English when Nceba is asked something by her grandmother that has everyone around falling silent and listening. “Nana ask, she want traditional or not. She can choose, no shame for choice.”

Traditional what, Marlon doesn’t manage to grasp, only that Nceba chooses traditional, with the body language and smell of a blushing person. Not until one day after school he smells that Nceba’s in Heat and it becomes clear. Nceba’s group is having a party with Nceba in the center, with lots of different kinds of food, their friends in the nearby groups invited, singing and dancing. They’ve erected a soft centerstage with poles topped with torches in each corner. Around it, there are wicker baskets filled with petals. When darkness falls Nceba dances in the middle and the people form a ring around her singing and drumming. She’s smiling so radiantly and she’s bedecked in jewelry that glitters in the fire-light. When the drums stop she stills, turns in a circle as if regarding the people around her, then points at Kwame who’s standing beside Marlon. Kwame smiles and her and bows in acceptance. Everyone cheers, Marlon included, when she takes Kwame’s hand and leads him into the stage made of soft blankets atop a thick layer of straw.

Marlon has seen lovemaking enough times not to be bothered. He copies the others and throws petals over the pair while Nceba takes her first knot. It’s possible that he should be jealous somehow, but he isn’t since they’re both his friends and Nceba smells so incredibly happy and excited. Instead, it only pleases him when Kwame sucks on her neck gland to make her keen in pleasure.

He’s happy for the two when he smells how Nceba and Kwame’s strong friendship bond shifts into a mating bond. But a week later Kwame comes to him. “Molloh. Nceba needs to go. We gonn make new home together away from here. We want you come with us. Be family. When you present, we real family. Nceba agrees.”

It’s a kick in the gut. 

Since he’s in a Progressive school he knows Progs aren’t as affected by the complicated scent bonds as the other designations. Then again, Progs don’t stimulate glands. In fact, they avoid doing that―self-stunting―to make sure instinct can’t rule them. But these people do. They might not communicate primally, shift, or scent each other in greeting. But since he’s gotten to know them he’s gotten his fair share of affectionate temple rubs from both Nceba and Kwame. And during Nceba’s knotting-ceremony Kwame had stimulated her neck gland. Of course, she’s going to be affected by scent bonds and instinct. Normally a newly mated O joins her mate’s pack but they live right next to each other which isn’t far enough for an O to wander.

Marlon despairs about losing her, but in the end, he can’t make himself leave his pack.

That night he sleeps bracketed between the two of them. When he wakes up Nceba’s lying on her side watching him. She smells sad. “Ndiyakuthanda, Molloh,” she says and lifts her hand to stroke his cheek softly.

“I love you too,” he hedges. He supports himself on his elbow to lean over her for one last, reciprocated affectionate temple and neck rub, then gets up to go to school not to start crying.

* * *

He hasn’t been home for three months. Never in his life has he wished as strongly that he was presented as he does now. If he had been, he could have mated her and taken them both home. It would have required some penis poking but he’d make that sacrifice for Nceba. Walking home from school takes a long time. Over and over he comes to the realization that he might never see Nceba again and he has to stop to remember how to breathe. Twice he has to stop and hide to cry.

He sees one of the sentries by their gates run off to announce his return but he can’t be bothered caring. He’s too lost in his own head to say hello. He walks up the long gravel driveway towards the grand stone stairs leading to their entrance when Aiden exits and briskly makes his way down the stairs. He looks like a thunderstorm and when he comes close enough Marlon can smell the sting of his rage. Marlon’s about to sneeze from the strength of it but Aiden’s fist hits him so hard it jars him out of it and sends him flying. He lands on his back seeing stars and losing his breath. Aiden’s on him, straddling him, grabbing his collar to pull him up for another punch that nearly makes him lose consciousness. He fights for orientation and not to be sucked up by the darkness that only leaves pinpricks of blurred sight. Aiden roars in his face, eyes glowing like red hellfire beacons, fangs long and every tooth pointy and sharp. Marlon would make the gestures of submission if he could remember what those are in his dazed state.

Aiden gets up, yanks Marlon to his feet and hauls him inside. On the second floor, he's slammed against the wall by a second person, ripped from Aiden's grip. Marlon doesn't have words to describe the relief he feels when Jed aggressively marks him up. “This won't do. Aiden, get him out of his clothes. The more skin to skin contact we get, the stronger the bonding," Jed commands between gritted teeth.

"With pleasure,” Aiden answers equally darkly.

Marlon's stripped and hoisted into Grandpa's bedroom where he's thrown on the bed. Jed follows, continuing to mark him up. “Get Jane in here then help me," Jed orders.

Marlon is barely allowed to leave that bedroom for a week. They even accompany him to the toilet. At no point does he protests. He knows what they're doing. They're claiming him, aggressively binding him into the pack. By the time he'll be allowed to leave any other bonds will be faded and drowned out by the pack bond. If he didn't so desperately need the confirmation that he'd made the right choice not leaving with Nceba and Kwame, he'd tell them an aggressive sniping wasn't necessary. That he’s still a Williams to his core.

“Any chance you will tell me why you're acting this way?” Marlon asks one morning when Aiden's got him tucked against his chest in bed.

“The only reason we knew you were alive is that grandpa called your school every day to check if you'd been there. He thought you'd left us. That you'd wandered like a hecking O. I swung by your school and I could smell that you were happy. But we, our bonds to you were eroding quickly. We couldn't stop that. It goes with the feeling of rejection.”

"So why didn't you just drag me back home and mark me up?” Not that he’d wanted that, he’s just curious.

“Grandpa wouldn't let us. He said that if we'd given you wanderlust then the greatest form of love we could show was to let you go. But if you came back it was another thing. All the while you let me sit here and experience a hard fade. I hate you for that and if you ever do it again I don't care what grandpa says.”

“I didn't think anyone would care if I stayed away. You couldn't even stand to be close to me. I'm sorry I wasn't sad enough to you.”

Aiden makes a frustrated sound. “Mar, you're the least self-aware person I know. I can smell it, you know? All the feelings you have that you're in complete self-denial about. Mom's death hit you harder than me but I couldn't comfort you when you had your head so far up in the blue that you didn't acknowledge it. Our bond is so strong your suffering was breaking me apart.” Aiden makes a threatening noise when Marlon draws breath to protest so Marlon keeps quiet. 

“Where did you go?"

Jed's voice from the doorway startle them both.

"Her name is Nceba,” Marlon answers. He isn't in denial about the pain that wells up inside when he tells them that. But when push comes to shove the bond-loss to her would have been a great deal more painful if his pack hadn't gone out of the way to claim him back. Now he only has to deal with the emotional aspect of a broken heart.

* * *

The next loss comes all too soon. They lose two people at the same time - one in body, one in spirit. Michael escorts Luci's body home to be burned on the family pyre. The fighting is too intense to take their dead home right now and most get burned in the field to avoid further losses. But you can't command the dead and that's what Michael is when he jumps off the truck to go unstrap the bindings of the stretcher Luci's body lies on. It's frightening. Michael has no scent. No expression. His eyes are empty and he moves mechanically. Marlon has come across scentlessness before, especially in the slums. But it's different when it's someone so close to you. 

Unlike his mother's death, Marlon mourns Luci hard and openly. He and grandpa both cry like kitlings when they burn her. Michael only stares unseeing into the flames.

Then begins the process to drag Michael back to the living. They do pretty much the same thing they did to Marlon, but with love rather than aggression. They take turns marking him up, talking to him, cuddling him. Marlon's tempted to try forcing him to siphon but roles have a way of assigning themselves and the kits flock to him for guidance and protection while the other adults fight to keep Michael alive.

Marlon keeps going to school now when he's allowed, just to make sure Keith won't get too far ahead. Jed's spending a lot of time at home trying to get his son better so Marlon starts stopping by the office on his way home to nose around. He knows Jed's put his name on the ownership papers so he acts thereafter, demanding to see paperwork and to be shown around, trying to learn what he can to help Jed run the company.

He goes home, takes care of the kits and spends time with his pack before crawling into bed to sleep mostly on top of Michael, purring a soothing plea for him to come back. It's frightening. He lies with his ear pressed against Michael's chest. The heart beats far too seldom and his chest heaves now and then as if he's forgotten to breathe. His skin is so cold and his eyes unseeing. He doesn't eat and doesn't drink more than can be dribbled into his mouth with a cloth. It's a form of hibernation and Marlon almost, _almost_ understands why Progs self-stunt to avoid this.

Jed's looking more haggard and pale by the day. He’s got dark bags under his eyes and he rarely purrs his all-is-well if you don’t count the soothing purr he makes when he presses his lips against Michael’s temple to make him want to keep living. So when Marlon finds another stack of quarterly audit books on Jed’s desk he doesn’t even think about not sitting down in his grandfather’s chair and start looking through them for anomalies. He rummages through old files to find the rapports Jed’s written for earlier audits and reads through them to see what information is needed, then summarises his own work in the same fashion Jed’s done. When he comes to bed Jed gets up and presumably goes to his office. Marlon’s asleep when he comes back and only wakes up partially. He imagines he smells saline but he’s not sure and Jed reaches out to pet his hair which quickly drags him back to sleep.

Not everything is bleak during this period. Marlon fetches the mail to find an envelope addressed to him. He opens it and starts to read. Aiden finds him sitting in a corridor crying with the letter pressed to his chest and the biggest grin on his face. His big brother stares down at him in bemusement. Soon enough Jed, Jane, and a couple of others have gathered around him in a semi-circle wordlessly waiting for an explanation. 

Marlon looks up at them. “There’s no shame in crying, okay? It’s a reaction to an overload of emotion, _any_ emotion,” he says. That's what Arvid told him as a kit and he's sticking to it.

“Nobody says there is, Mar,” Jed answers, “but you smell so happy and we’re all starved for good things happening so if you’d be kind enough to share…?”

Marlon beams and hands over the letter to Jed who starts to read. Aiden leans over his shoulder to read along and is soon grinning widely just like Marlon. “It’s from Laurent Hale. Mar’s been teaching him to read.”

The letter is riddled with misspellings and every letter is pencilled down in a painstaking way as if every word required a lot of thinking, but it’s still a letter of triumph. Laurent has gotten good enough at reading to finally be able to answer Marlon. There are no big secrets in the letter. Laurent says he misses him, that he's started teaching the kits and a few adults in the pack to read, that this and that person at the Sanctuary did this and that, that he's in the process of presenting as an Alpha. It's nothing and it's huge at the same time.

Marlon's joy is infectious, letting the whole pack breathe a little easier. Soon thereafter Michael takes a turn for the better. The only drawback is that he wants to go straight back to the battlefield in search of revenge. 

Less than a month after Michael's left the next big loss hits them.

Marlon comes back from school in a decent mood. But the other members of the pack fall silent when he nears. The whole house smells of mourning. Marlon grabs the arm of the first person he can find. It's Timothy. “What happened?"

Timothy looks at him with sad, pitying eyes and says with a soft voice, “Mar, I think perhaps it's best if you hear it from someone else. If you sit down I'll go get―”

"The heck you will. Is it Michael?” Marlon sees the beginning of the headshake and pushes on. “Is it Aiden? Don't tell me it's Aiden!" Why else would anyone hesitate to tell him? Panic rises like bile in his throat. Just because there is a war going on doesn't mean nothing can happen to them here.

Timothy draws breath to answer but someone else beats him to it. “It's dad," Aiden says and steps out of a doorway.

Marlon deflates in relief and bites his tongue not to utter 'Thank Ares!’ out loud.

“They burned him on the battlefield. It was too dangerous to take him home,” Aiden goes on.

"How are you holding up?” Marlon asks, looking first at Aiden then at Timothy. Strangely, Tim might be the one who smells the saddest. The relief he'd felt suddenly evaporates and he grows cold on the inside. “Heck. Where's grandpa?"

“In his office. He doesn't want to be disturbed.”

Marlon takes off running with his heart hammering in panic. As a parent, you're not supposed to have favorites. But Jed did. He'd been so little when the war started that he hadn't been aware of how the company was run. But when he started going to the office while Jed took care of Michael he'd talked to employees. People who'd worked for them for a long time. He'd found out that the four corner offices on the top floor belonged to Myra, Sandra, Jed, and Matthew. Matthew had his own office but there is a second desk in Jed's office and one employee explained that 'back in the days’ it was a safer bet to go to Jed's office if you wanted to find Matthew because the two of them worked together more often than not. They were close. Very close.

Marlon doesn't run to the office but to the bathroom next to it. He climbs up on the toilet seat and presses his ear to the ventilation high up on the wall to eavesdrop.

Jed's on the phone.

“ _... come home._ Please _, I can't do this alone. I need you, Karen._ " There's a silence when Jed listens to the answer. "No. It's not okay. Listen to me, honey, I need _you! I’m not holding up. Please, I'm begging you. Take the whole pack with you and come home. If the war comes to our city we'll meet the enemy on our turf. It's been too long and I can't― Just… just come home. I need you. I need you. Please._ ”

The answer is no. Marlon listens to Jed's continued pleas for his mate's return for a few more minutes before Jed gives up and says goodbye. At first, it's too silent. Then, Jed starts to sob. Marlon feels that red-hazed rage well up inside of him, fuelled by every broken sob. It's lucky grandma Karen isn't home or he would have released that rage. It takes a long time before the sobbing stops. Marlon stays in the bathroom until he's calmed down. He leaves the bathroom just as Jed comes out. They both startle and stare at each other for several seconds, Jed looking busted and Marlon shocked to the core. Marlon scents in Jed's direction, brain refusing to compute what his nose is telling him.

Jed speaks first. “I, uh, I'm not feeling very well. I'm going to bed. Could you tell the others not to disturb? I want to be alone.” 

Marlon's mouth is so dry his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He manages a jerky nod. He watches his grandpa turn and walk away with slumped shoulders and no spirit. Jedikiah is a man in his prime, age-wise. Generally, except hair graying, between 50 and 80 your body's still in top shape and you've had many years to amass knowledge and experience. But Jed's a broken man right now. Nothing about him shows that he's one of the most competent and powerful Patriarchs in the country. The rapid loss of two of his children, and now…

Icy anger wells back up in Marlon. It isn't the loss of his kits that broke Jed - grandma did. He's right, though. The fewer that see him this way, the better.

Marlon turns on his heel and hurries downstairs to find a couple of the high ranking pack members. “Jedikiah isn’t feeling well and has requested complete privacy. He’s not to be disturbed,” he tells them when he finds them. “Any urgent business should be directed to me and I will take it to Jed. Tell the rest of the pack.”

Then he hurries back upstairs into Jed’s office. He walks around the desk and grabs the phone handle, lifting it to his ear. The phone number’s written down on a note just in front of him. He dials the number. He recognizes the voice of the one who answers - another original pack member. “Lisa, it’s Marlon Williams. I need to speak with grandma, stat.”

He tries to control his anger or he’d just roar at grandma once she answers. He has to wait several minutes before she picks up. “Mar?” she says with surprise in her voice.

“ _Indeed_ ,” he answers coolly. “I’m calling to inform you that you are no longer the Main of the Williams core. If you still wish to be part of the Williams pack while retaining a leadership role, you are welcome to form a cell of other pack members that prefer to stick by you. But you’ve forsaken your duties towards the pack and forgotten the objectives required by a Main to fulfil, and a new Main will take your place here at the core.”

Grandma chokes on disbelief. “What??”

Marlon rolls his eyes impatiently. “Was I not clear? Very well, let me recount the lesson you taught me. It is a Main’s responsibility to see to the safety and happiness of her pack. Her main objective is to make sure a pack's greatest treasures are properly cared for. Kitlings, kits, and Juvies. Secondary, it's the duty of both the Main and Patriarch to support each other. And thirdly, but most importantly, a Main's loyalty has to first and foremost be to the pack. _You_ taught me this, yet you're failing on all three of these accounts. You might be a sensational General, but you're no longer a good Main. You've lost sight of what's important and shifted your priorities. We need a good Main, hence, you're out. Your name will be stricken from any ownership records and if you need financial support you will ask for it like any other cell. You get to keep your personal account but it won't be automatically refilled anymore. All pack members currently in the field will be called home and informed that if they choose to stay with you no blame will befall them but they will no longer be part of the core. And should you come here with the intention to reclaim your rank, know that every O no matter what rank will fight you to the death to keep it from happening. If they fail the Alphas will take their place. If _they_ fail, us Juvies will take over. I'm willing to bet even some of the kits will give it their best shot. As you know, Clara's a menace.”

There's a brief silence over the line before his grandma speaks. “Marlon, this is preposterous. I'm out here for the pack's sake. The Union must be driven out of America or―”

"Wrong,” Marlon cuts her off. "Those two sentences don't go together and demonstrates my point. We're not drafted yet. Where does America come into the picture?”

"People are dying everywhere the Union sets foot. Everyone―”

" _Enough!_ ” Marlon cuts her off again. "I understand your reasoning for staying at the front, resisting the invasion. It's the very reason you are not worthy of the position of a Main anymore. Packrunners are one. But a body dies when the heart stops beating and to every Packrunner their pack's core is their heart. Our heart is struggling and you are draining it of its blood.”

"Are you blaming me for the war, Mar?" Grandma's voice is strangely soft, like she's patiently talking down to a child throwing a tantrum. 

“Of course not. But I'm blaming you for the choices you've made about what to do about the war. You took all our brightest, most cunning and wily members and left the domestic ones, the caretakers and least educated, those who were the best at caring for a household and raise us kits. At the time it was necessary as our city was targeted. We were under a direct threat. But we haven't been for a while and yet you've refused us the support we need when asked for. How long did you think grandpa would be able to carry the burden you laid on him without support? One year? A decade? Five decades? And then you are the one sabotaging us instead of helping him.”

"The fighting is very intense right now, Mar. We can't just pick up and leave because Jed's in mourning. I lost my son, same as him. It's tough but we'll get through it. Jed's an exceptional man, he'll push through.”

"Oh, I know he will. I'll see to it. Next in line after him is Anthony and as much as I love him he's nowhere near capable to lead not only a pack but a big company. So I'll make sure we don't lose grandpa. You know who currently is the only Williams involved in the upper management of the company? _I am_.” He realizes the truth of that when he says it and it chills him to the bone. From today and probably several weeks at best, Jed's out of the picture and leaves him with a role he's nowhere near ready to mantle. “And for the next month or two, I will be the only one because grandpa will be completely incapacitated by what transpired between you two a few hours ago. It's not the death of dad that breaks grandpa, it's the hard fade of your mating bond. When he woke up this morning it was as strong as ever, when he left his office after having spoken to you I couldn't catch a single trace of it. It's gone. The trust between you is irreversibly broken. That's why you're not our Main anymore.”

He'd expected a reprimand, protests, _something_. But through the raspy line he only hears stunned silence.

He waits, but when he realizes no answer is forthcoming he says, “If you truly care about the pack you'll take this demotion with grace. I'll even give you three days to be the one to inform the pack of this change and issue the call to go home. No blame will be put on you for choosing the patriotic route as long as you don't stop anyone else in the pack from choosing the pack. That is all. Goodbye.”

He commends himself for sounding so cool and calm when he really only wanted to shout bad words and insults at her. It’s out of the question right now. At every point of time he can remember he’d been at ease doing his own thing because he knew Jed had everything covered. He didn’t need to worry about money because Jed made sure the company kept bringing in more. He didn’t have to worry about the kits or the pack working because of Jed. The pack’s been, and is, under a lot of pressure. The adults are burdened with mourning from a lot of losses and spread too thin, and the kits don’t fare that well when the adults are forced to take up roles they aren’t quite up to. His own homeschooling during the bombings is a testament to that. Back then he hadn’t understood the problems. Now, they’re dumped on his shoulders. He’d seen hard fades before. He knows Jed’s out of the game. He hadn’t known a mating bond as strong and old as his grandparents could fade out of existence in only a few hours. But then again… had it? He remembers that outburst Jed had had when he’d taken Laurent to the hospital. He hadn’t thought much about what Jed had said about grandma then, but he had said they’d grown apart. The mating bond was still intact because Jed had kept faith in his mate. Tonight, he lost that faith and the bond had faded but it’s been a long time coming.

Marlon sits down by the typewriter and starts writing all the paperwork for the things he’d told his grandma would happen, needing something to do to calm down. When that’s done he goes to grandpa’s bedroom. It’s locked but he has his own key. He unlocks and goes inside, then locks again.

“I told you I wanted to be alone,” Jed says monotonously. He’s lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling.

“Too bad I don’t have a room of my own then, huh?” Marlon answers flippantly and starts getting undressed. Jed doesn’t answer. “I told the rest of them you want privacy and all urgent matters should go through me so I can forward it to you.” With his back turned he halts his movement for a beat. He hates to lie to loved ones. “Which I have no intention doing,” he adds, “if it’s a matter I feel confident I can solve without you. I will let them believe the orders came from you nevertheless. I don’t like lying but it’s my firm belief that if they realise what mental state you’re in, they’ll panic and all will fall apart.” He turns around to find Jed looking at him with an empty gaze. Much like grandma, Jed isn’t saying anything. He isn’t shocked. Just… empty.

Marlon finishes undressing and goes to crawl into bed beside Jed. He cuddles up close and purrs comfortingly against Jed’s upper arm. “I need you to sign some paperwork tomorrow. I told grandma…” he tells Jed what he told Karen about the consequences for her actions. Jed’s only response are silent tears. Jed falls asleep from exhaustion.

The next morning Marlon brings Jed both breakfast and the paperwork. Jed signs everything but barely eats. 

“Grandpa, your scent is fading. I promised you I’d never fake your signature again. But if you enter a state where you can’t sign things yourself, I will, for the sake of the pack.”

Jed nods and takes a bite of the sandwich, chewing as if it’s torture and he does it out of duty. “You do what you have to do,” he answers.

That’s the last thing he says to Marlon before the months from hell start. Jed goes scentless and catatonic. Marlon tries to hide that he’s acting stand-in for a Patriarch, panicking on the inside. It doesn’t translate to his scent. Except for anyone with a god-cursed nose like Aiden’s who is acting very suspiciously towards him.

Grandma calls two days later. “It’s done. I’m very angry. I’m angry, because once I thought through what you said I realized you’re right. So I’m not angry at you.” She doesn’t sound angry at all. “I firmly believe the Union needs to be driven out of America or no pack will survive in the long run. But I also realize that the idea we had while splitting up as we did, failed. We thought that if we divided ourselves the way we did, the kits in the pack would get to grow up and be kits, with the carefree kithood any kit deserves. Out here… When we went through the Midwest we were intercepted several times by kits with rifles and guns and hard faces with equally hard scents. It’s something we, I, wished to spare you. And yet, here I am talking to you, hearing you’re helping Jed run the company, you’re making decrees of a Patriarch and I _know_ it’s not coming from Jed. And you’re not even presented yet. Or if you are, you’re so newly presented you shouldn’t have to worry about any of those things for years to come. And I realized I don’t know. _Are_ you presented, Mar?”

Marlon’s mouth is dry. “No.”

“Is Jed alright?”

He hesitates before he answers. “...No.”

Grandma sighs. “I love Jed. I will always love him. There won’t be another mate for me, ever. I’ve known that since I was a kit and met him for the first time. But he’s always loved the pack and the idea of the pack more than me. I don't hold it against him. He's always had room in his heart for me too. But if you're telling me the truth and he lost his mating bond―”

"I'm no liar.”

"I believe you. What I wanted to say was, since he's lost the bond, I won't come back to the core until the war is over. I wouldn't want to break his heart again by leaving. At least I know he doesn't have to sleep alone. Until then, I'm now the Main of the Williams-Hartley pack, combatant cell to the Long Island Williams core. I have told everyone that they were allowed to choose. I said I and Jed had agreed to split the pack without animosity and that once the war is over those who choose to belong to the military cell will be welcome to rejoin the core again.”

"We'll honour that,” Marlon is quick to agree. Jed would stand for nothing else.

"Good. I don't know how well informed you are about what's going on over here, but we're spread out on three locations. Therefore it'll take a different amount of time for the returning pack members to come home. You can expect the first ones to start arriving within a week. But those who are with me will be trickling back in a month and up to three months from now.”

Marlon frowns. "Why so long?"

“Mar, my beautiful sweet kit," Karen says sounding like the warm grandma he remembers from way back. “We're cut off behind enemy lines surrounded on all sides. The easiest route back home is through the Union HQ camp. We can do that. But not en masse. If we sneak through it one or two at a time and time when they get reinforcements it's as safe as it gets. But I won't send my people away to be slaughtered so don't blame the returnees for taking their time.”

“Heck! You're surrounded? Would it help if we came to your aid?”

This time grandma laughs. "Jinkies, Mar! You're just like your grandpa when he was that age. Full throttle and no sleep. No. We _are_ surrounded, but we're in a large forest that does half the fighting for us when they try to flush us out. We're right where we're supposed to be to do the most damage. They're surrounded too so anytime our troops on the outside make a push we push from our side too. If they weren't so many and didn’t keep getting reinforcement all the time we would have had them long ago. I just need you to understand _why_ there might be members coming back still months from now.”

"I understand.”

"And if you'd do me the courtesy to report weekly who has arrived home safely I'd be grateful. I will worry the moment they leave.”

"Will do.”

"Thank you. These are the people who have chosen to be part of the Williams-Hartley cell…” Grandma recounts a list of names that Marlon quickly jots down. They don't speak for long after that and grandma ends by saying “I love you."

It leaves Marlon feeling miserable. He'd thought he hated her when in fact he only hated the part of her that is a general. He sits feeling forlorn for several minutes before his brain screeches to a halt and he's upset all over again to the point where he wants to call grandma right away to call her out on what she said. “At least I know he won't have to sleep alone.” Marlon has the infuriating suspicion that grandma had refused him his room back to make sure Jed wouldn't have to sleep alone even when he requested it. If that was true it was incredibly disrespectful and belittling. They could have told him 'Jed's under a lot of pressure right now and needs someone to sleep with him so he can relax.’ He would have. Sometimes seething with spite probably, but he would have. Heck, he would have slept in grandpa's bed more often than he has now instead of sleeping in the wardrobe.

He takes a couple of deep breaths to calm down. Maybe it didn't mean what he thought it meant and he had much more important issues to deal with. Like trying to get grandpa out of his catatonic state asap...

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I managed to avoid harmful stereotypes when describing Nceba. Marlon's POV is supposed to be indifferent to skin colour but I hope it came through loud and clear that Nceba, Kwame and their families are from Africa. I wanted them to solely be different culturally without putting a value on if the differences were good or bad. I'm not subjected to the institutionalized and societal prejudice you are if you're a POC and I might be blind to things outside my own experiences, so if you're a POC and felt that I somehow perpetuated a harmful stereotype, please tell me why you think so.


	16. Year of the Losses pt 3 - Jedikiah's Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon turns to extreme measures to save his grandpa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PLEASE READ!**
> 
> This chapter contains clothed, non-consensual non-penetrative sexual acts between a Juvie and an adult related to their different biology and scent bonds. It's not a sexual act related to lust - it's purely bonding. Their bodies have a lot of innate safeguards to stop it from happening but it can be bypassed under very special circumstances. Naturally, the Juvie in question is Marlon. We will never get a scientific explanation as to why his innate safeguards didn't kick in. It might be hormonal imbalances or maybe it was because he wanted and instigated it. It's hard to say but it isn't new. We've seen him skirt this line before without any sign of aversion. We will get an explanation to why it was possible for the adult, though.
> 
> I was hesitant to write this scene since non-con isn't what this verse is about but after a long inner debate, I decided that it's too important to leave out. I originally had present-day Marlon just tell our boys about it but re-reading I felt that it didn't illuminate both POVs enough and made Marlon seem completely justified in his actions. Hence, I opted to show the scene instead, hoping you'd catch up on how dubious his choice was. 
> 
> I don't think this scene is triggering to us who've experienced rape. I personally feel that their difference in biology and perception make what happens too foreign to properly relate to as fully sexual in our sense. It should hopefully make you feel uncomfortable and perhaps troubled, but not triggered. But if you're in doubt and need me to summarise what happens before you can decide if you can read it, feel free to contact me on chat on [Tumblr](http://coplins.tumblr.com/).
> 
> **TAGS** \- I've chosen to add the tag "consent issues" but didn't change the major warnings to "underage" and "non-con" because I don't think they properly apply as descriptors of the whole fic for this single scene. If I was trawling the non-con or underage tags to find a fic and found this I'd feel tricked after reading. Still, I'm asking you for your opinion on this once you've read. Do _you_ think the whole story should be marked with those tags due to this scene? Let it be known, though, that if I do change the major warnings I'll remove this foreword for the chapter and any reader will be considered sufficiently warned.

* * *

Aiden's suspiciousness is the blessing that saves him.

“Open the door, Mar! Open, or I swear I'll kick it in! ... Okay, suit yourself.”

Marlon opens the door catching Aiden's leg mid-kick to pull him inside and lock the door behind him. Aiden lands in an angry heap and bounces back on his feet turning on Marlon. “What are you hiding, Mar? Where the heck is grandpa?"

“He's right here.”

"Cow's dung, Mar! I haven't smelt him on you for three days and underneath your calm, you're in an emotional turmoil but not out of mourning. Where is he?!”

Marlon puts his hands in his pockets and nods towards the bed.

Aiden frowns at him and turns to look. Grandpa lies motionless on his side, paperwork spread all around him so Marlon can work while cuddling him, marking him up and comforting him.

All the blood drains from Aiden’s face and his scent sours with fear. He jerks his head towards Marlon again with panic in his eyes. “ _Jinkies!_ Oh, heck, Mar! What are we going to do?! Oh, heck, heck, heck! This is bad! Why haven’t you told anyone?”

“Because of that exact reaction you’re having right now. If we told them, there’d be panic and nothing would get done. I’m doing as much as I can of his work, and if I don’t feel I can make the right decision I temporize and stall as much as I can. I’m just surprised nobody has voiced any suspicion except you.”

“I asked why no one thought it was odd that you were the only one who got to talk to him and Jane said Jed does this. Not _this_ this,” he gestures jerkily at Jed’s unmoving body, “but he isolates himself from everyone to limit distractions. He’s been doing that too and fro since his Juvies and it’s one reason he’s had periods when he didn’t come home from the office for weeks.”

“Weeks. So we’ve got weeks to bring him back.”

Aiden whines as if he’s in pain. “We need to call grandma. Tell her to come back home. Jane might be able to keep the daily life in the household running but who’s going to care for the business and economy?”

Marlon shakes his head. “She’s not coming. Why do you think he got like this?”

Aiden stares at him looking even more shocked than before, more fear lacing its way through his scent.

Marlon goes on. “When you told me dad was dead and Jed wasn’t to be disturbed I went to the bathroom beside his office to accidentally overhear their phone conversation on purpose. He _begged_ her. He said he couldn’t do this alone and asked her to take the pack and come home. She refused. When he stepped out of his office he had no mating bond.”

“That’s impossible! The mating bond was intact before he went to call grandma. A hard fade takes days at lea―” Aiden cuts off his protest and looks at Jed, silent for almost a minute with eyes wide, swallowing audibly twice. “It _is_ possible. Oh, heck.” That’s a good thing about Aiden. When he’s presented with hard facts he’ll accept them rather than sticking to what he’s been taught. Both of them ‘knew’ a bond couldn’t fade that fast. Until Jed’s bond did. Now they know it can.

“I made a deal with grandma,” Marlon says, drawing Aiden’s attention. “The pack is split. We’re currently without a Main. Those who wanted to stay behind and keep fighting are now part of our combat cell Williams-Hartley under her command. She’s promised not to return until the war is over. The pack members who chose to heed our call to come home will start arriving in a few days. I need to tell the rest of the pack of the split before that but I don’t know how.”

Aiden’s jaw muscles clench a few times. The sour fear in his scent begins to fade. “Like you’ve told us everything else. Just march down there and rattle off your orders and decrees. Do we know who will come back?”

“I’ve got a list of those who chose to stay with grandma.”

“Good, because they’ll want to know.”

“I’m so glad you’re here, Aid. I need to go to the office to look in grandpa’s archives and talk to a few of our employees, and I have to read up on the tax laws. But those books are also at the office. And we’re trying to buy a company and I need to figure out why before someone else buys it, plus there’s next month’s budget both for the company and us. I could really use the backup. I haven’t left grandpa longer than it takes to make a phone call or go downstairs to eat. I’m exhausted.”

“You’re running the company too,” Aiden states and looks at him like he’s never seen him before.

“As best as I can. But like I say, I temporize as much as possible.”

Aiden scrutinizes him for a moment that feels like forever, then looks at the paperwork spread out on the bed for an equally long time.

“I was thinking of getting the dogs in here, and maybe that fat, red cat that lets Clara dress it up and play tea party. They’d help bring warmth and closeness but I’ve been unfortunate when I’ve left this room and haven’t run into them,” Marlon tells him.

Aiden nods. “Good thinking. This is why you’re my favourite brother.”

“I’m your only brother,” Marlon points out.

Most of the fear in Aiden’s scent evaporates with the dryly arched eyebrow Marlon’s way. Aiden thinks of all the kits born in the pack as his siblings. He calls several of the Os ‘mom’, as well as some of the Alphas are titled dad when he speaks to them. He uses names when he talks _about_ them but he’s not obsessed with genealogy like Marlon is.

Marlon smirks. “You’ll help me?”

“Of course. Were you ever in doubt?”

Marlon feels like sagging from relief. He walks around Aiden and crawls onto the bed to slot himself against Jed, rubbing his temple and neck against his cheek before purring comfortingly against his temple. “Jed? The fear you smelt was just Aiden temporarily panicking when he saw your state. He’s calmed down now and he’ll stay with you when I go to the office. You don’t need to worry, we’ve got you covered.” Marlon has no idea if any of what he says registers with Jed but he talks anyway. Sometimes Jed opens his eyes, sometimes his gaze shifts to follow sources of sound. But the gaze is empty. Michael had been much the same, but had moved sometimes. When Michael arrived home with Luci’s body he’d been scentless but you could still smell the Alpha marker. Later he’d lost all scent and gone catatonic like Jed is now. Marlon hopes there’s a shred of awareness so he talks. Anything that might help call grandpa back to the living.

* * *

There's a knock on Jed's office door and Marlon lifts his head from the papers he'd been studying. The New York skyline is already turning pink which means he should have gone home hours ago. He rubs his grainy eyes tiredly. “Come in."

Sandra steps into the office and smiles briefly when she sees Marlon occupy Matthew's desk. Sandra and Myra are both back and it's a relief having two corner offices in HQ occupied again. It takes an immense load off Marlon's shoulders. “Hey, Mar, could you forward a question to Jed about the budget?”

Marlon grows cold inside. His mouth feels dry. It’s a too common state these days. “Is there anything wrong with the budget?" He's been doing them for two months with Aiden's help. This third month he'd done it but he'd turned it over to Sandra with a load of other paperwork when she returned, heaping the final responsibility on her. He wishes they’d be like other companies that made yearly budgets. But that was part of Jed’s genius. He’d let things be fluent and adaptive to circumstances, making things much harder for Marlon now.

She looks troubled. “Not exactly. But you said he's under a lot of pressure… I reacted because there are elements in the budget that are different from what I expected from him. Then I backtracked through his paperwork the last year to catch up and... well, honestly, he doesn't seem to be holding up. Last month he dropped the ball on a deal that he normally would have been all over, and we took a small loss for the first time in almost a decade―”

"It was only a small loss,” Marlon interrupts too quickly, anxiety crawling like worms in his belly. She can smell it, of course. She, on the other hand, smells as calm as ever. Both she and Myra are highly competent, but Myra is brisk and stressed while Sandra is calm and thoughtful in her approach to things. Myra has a positive type of stress that gets things done without panicking. Sandra is unflappable, doing one thing at a time with no stress over the next task. And yet they’re both equally effective. Marlon wishes they'd been the first to arrive instead of coming home later.

“I'm not arguing, Mar, and we can afford to take heavier losses than that. You don't have to worry,” she says with a brief, calming smile that shows she misinterpreted his anxiety, “the budget is perfectly safe. But that's just it. Jed doesn't usually play it safe like this. And he's only put aside enough money for acquisitions to sustain the salaries and daily needs of the employees. He hasn't given them any money to do anything. So we're paying them to sit tight and drink coffee. I find it strange and I would like you to inquire for me why that is. Does he know something he's failed to inform us of?”

Marlon's cheeks burn hot and his heart is drumming rapidly as he stands up and goes towards her. He stops two strides away, smooths down his skirt and suit jacket, adjusts his tie and refrains from stroking a hand over his hair to check if it's still slicked back or if the tight bun he collected his braid in, is still tight in the nape of his neck. He finally stops fidgeting and stands straight, chin up, to face the consequences of his actions. “I made the budget. I've made both the monthly company and household budget since we got notified of dad's death.”

There's a flicker of surprise on Sandra's face. "Oh. I mean no disrespect, but I wish Jed had let me know he was training you this way. I'm surprised he signed off on the company budgets but I must commend you for the household budgets. They're entirely without faults and Jane has expressed gratitude about some changes that were made.”

Marlon's tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth when he swallows. Sandra shows no signs of upset. There's a tiny, troubled crease above one of her eyebrows but that's it. “He didn't sign off on those budgets. I did."

One of her eyebrow arches inquiringly, her gaze is open and curious. She's calmly waiting for him to go on with an air of no judgement even though she’s seen Jed’s signature on all the paperwork. She’s _Listening_.

Marlon takes a deep to gather the courage he needs to be honest. “I hate it when people talk over my head. When they treat me like a dumb kit and refuse to tell me things because I'm too young to understand in their eyes. I hated it when I was a kit and I loathe it even more now. Therefore, I've found all the places at home where I can accidentally overhear on purpose any conversations I'm not privy to.”

"Like you did when you heard about the factory pollution,” she states.

"Mhm. Ye―" His voice cracks and he has to clear his throat. Sandra holds up her finger in a bid for him to wait. Then she goes to the cabinet where Jed keeps the drinks he offers guests. She opens a bottle of soda that she hands him when she comes back. Marlon drinks deeply before he speaks, wetting his parched throat gratefully. “I came home from school and was told about dad's death. My first thought went to Jed. As a parent, you're not supposed to have favourites, but dad…” He casts a glance behind him at his dad's desk.

“Matthew was everyone's favourite, Mar. He had grit, charm, wit and looks. I think all of us loved him a little bit more than we should.”

"I… I didn't know that. But I do know that grandpa loved him the most, and he took Luci's death hard, so I worried about him, about how he’d take losing his favourite.” He takes another sip. "I was told he was in his office and had asked not to be disturbed, so I ran to the bathroom next to it. The vent… it's not clear as a bell but you can still hear what's said. So I listened to Jed's phone call with Karen. He told her he wasn't coping, that he needed her. He _begged_ her to take the pack and come home. She refused. Then I listened to him cry for an hour. I stayed until I no longer smelled like I wanted to murder grandma. Incidentally, I stepped out of the bathroom at the same time as Jed left the office.” He turns dead serious and locks gaze with Sandra. "When he went to make that call his mating bond was as strong as ever. When he stepped out of the room, I couldn't catch a single trace of it.” There’s a short, surprised intake of breath from Sandra, but she doesn’t interrupt him. 

Marlon looks at the floor. “In the morning his scent was fading. At breakfast I had him sign documents I drew up the night before, cutting grandma off from any pack ownerships, stuff like that. I told him I’d fake his signature if I needed to, despite having promised him I’d never do it again. He told me to do what I had to do. That’s the last thing he said to me. By afternoon he was scentless and catatonic.” Marlon looks up again. “I told grandma she was no longer our Main and that she was no longer welcome in the core. I told her that if she still wanted to be part of the pack we could split and she could lead a combat cell. I told her that if she needed money she’d have to request it like any other cell would. I’ve set aside a monthly sum on a newly opened account to make sure we have the funds for it, should she make a request. I told her she had three days to make the announcement of the split herself and that she needed to offer the pack the opportunity to go home or stay and become part of her cell, after that we would request the return. I’ve temporized as much as I can and divided my time between Jed and the company. I’m not diffident. I fully believe I can do exactly what Jed does, but right now I lack knowledge I need to do that. And I need time to gather that knowledge, to find things out and to sniff out the right people to ask and the right books to read. I don’t sleep much normally but now I’ve been taking uppers daily to stay awake, crashing about once a week when my body shuts off and makes me sleep 12 to 16 hours straight. Aiden’s been helping me. Without him, I wouldn’t be able to leave Jed for long at all. The dogs and the fat, red cat have been a great support too when I’ve had to be here and Aiden has had to care for his personal needs. But it’s been tough. I hadn’t expected him to be in this state for so long. Michael wasn’t.”

“So a Juvie has been running the company for months,” Sandra states thoughtfully.

Defensive ire rises in Marlon’s gut. Aiden presented within a month of discovering Jed’s state. They both think it was triggered by necessity but it’s hard to know since Aiden is old enough for it to be normal to present. Marlon’s jealous and wishes it had been him. “Who else then?” he asks. “I considered the adults we had at home at the time. Jane is an excellent leader but her heart and mind was always on the domestic parts of a pack. Most of the ones you left behind lack the education or the mental capacity to run a company. Take Dave for an instance. His thumbs are so green you almost expect lush grass to spring up in his footsteps, but he struggles with basic math. Those who work here at the office all hold low-level positions and when I looked into what they actually _do_ , it’s nothing like what Jed does. I know Timothy worked with Jed a lot―”

“Athena, _no_ ,” Sandra breathes, horrified at the thought of Timothy trying to act as their leader.

“That was my conclusion. And amongst the Alphas Anthony was next in line after Jed but again, he’s not business savvy. You tell me which adult could have done a better job than I have out of the ones left at the core?”

She thinks for a bit, eyes moving as she’s going down an internal list of names. Then she shakes her head minutely. “No, you’re right. Anyone remotely up to the task was with us. Jed’s said to Karen he was grooming Aiden for a leadership position within the company, and that he wanted to groom you the same way he did Aiden, but that you evaded any attempts from his side. Karen’s complained that you were always up to no good and impossible to rein in and control when we’ve talked about all of you left at home. She expressed great frustration about such a bright kit self-destructing and feared you were self-sabotaging to a degree where you’d never amount to anything.” 

Marlon keeps his facial expression smooth but the anger spiking in his scent gives him away.

Sandra smiles. “We don’t know you, Mar. What I found when I came home was not the reality I expected. I haven’t been home for five years. You were a kit last time I was home. Today, I’m working alongside a young man. And you are a man, knot or no knot.”

Marlon calms down. He reminds himself that Sandra is only relaying what other people have said. “I know I can do this, Sandra. I just need more information, more time to read up on things, more―” he cuts off with a frustrated noise.

“Agreed. You need more education. If it was up to me I’d send you straight to college. Unfortunately, the laws are very strict and we can’t bribe in anyone unpresented. It’s not possible because as long as you’re not presented you’d stand out like a beacon and might even make the news nationwide. It simply can’t be done discreetly. And changing laws takes time we don’t have. However, most of the pack has returned or will arrive within two weeks. That means we have several people to divide the workload between.”

“You’re cutting me off?” He tries not to be bitter about it. 

“I’m doing no such thing. I believe, until we’ve all settled in, you are vital to help catch us up.” She walks around him and sits leaned against the edge of his desk so he has to turn to keep eye contact. He wonders if she does it to be more comfortable or if it is to make him more comfortable by making herself shorter than him. “However,” she says, “you have a decision to make. We need to inform the pack of Jed’s state. It must be done.”

“I know, but the pack is in such unrest right now. It might throw them into a panic. First with the mourning, then with the split of the pack and us not having a Main. And the sudden tripling in size with the constantly shifting dynamics with every returning member,” Marlon complains. It worries him. 

“Oh, yes, it will cause major unrest. I’m not denying that. It still has to be done. Jed could be in this state for a year. He might not make it. So the pack needs to know. And that’s why you’ve got a decision to make. If we tell them when it happened and what you’ve done, it will direct criticism and distrust against you. Every decision you’ve made in his stead will be minutely scrutinized. Like myself, many of us only know you by reputation and not everyone will be able to see what the consequences would have been if you hadn’t acted as you did. Nor will they believe a Juvie was the best choice to lead the company in Jed’s absence. Far from everybody will be blind to why your actions were a good choice, and you will gain new allies that see you in a better light, giving you more respect than they do now. I also think some won’t believe you at all, thinking Aiden is the one who is behind what’s been done. He’s the one most frequently acting middle hand between Jed, meaning you, and the pack.”

“He’s a red-eyed Alpha. They listen to him.” It’s practical. But Marlon can’t _not_ be bitter about it.

She nods. “His looks lend him credibility. There’s no denying that. But that also means that some will give him credit no matter what he, you, or I say. So telling the pack when this happened will cause several rifts in the pack. It won’t have a major impact on what the pack decides to do about Jed, but it will have an impact on you.” She pauses, drawing breath. “However, we could also say Jed’s faded mating bond is a new occurrence. That he spiralled into deep depression and turned scentless recently. Today even. If we do that, it won’t cause factions in the pack as to whether you’ve acted wrong or right. There will still be unrest, just not as much. However, it also means that those of us who’d see you in a new light if we knew what you’ve done, won’t know. You won’t get credit and be more highly respected, and you won’t be mistrusted and won’t get criticism. For many of us homecomers, you’ll be judged by what we’ve heard about you, which isn’t as good as you could wish. You and Aiden sticking by Jed’s side to help him will merely be seen as following orders. Therefore, I give you the choice of what to do since it will impact your life the most.”

“If lying means the least unrest in the pack while we’re already in upheaval, then it’s not really a choice. We say it’s recent.”

Sandra purses her lips and scrutinizes him for a beat. “Are you certain that’s the way you want to go?”

“Yes. Why would you even ask that?”

“Because looking at it short-term, it is the wisest decision. But you will most likely present as an Alpha. And as an Alpha, you’ll live in this pack for a very long time. I would bet a lot of money on that you will want to climb high in the hierarchy. Most hierarchy fights are superficial as both combatants already know what the outcome will be. It’s not who is the physically strongest that gets the other to fold, it’s who they think will be the better leader. Whom of us are most likely to make the wisest decision for the pack if we end up in a situation where we are the highest ranking member present. If two people are both equally certain of their superiority you end up with fights that could turn lethal.”

“Like when Josh and Anthony fought and Anthony’s arm got messed up?”

“Exactly like that. And then knowledge of actions like yours might be what makes your opponent fold even if they occurred during your Juviehood.”

“It would still be a selfish choice to reveal the truth just so that I could have a higher rank as an adult,” Marlon maintains. “Peace within the pack is more important right now.”

It causes one of those tiny, troubled wrinkles to appear over Sandra’s brow again and she pauses before she speaks as if she wants to argue. She doesn’t, though. “Very well. Then that’s what we do. We wrap up the work here and go home, and tomorrow morning we’ll inform the rest of the pack that Jed lost his scent during the night.”

They do that. Marlon doesn’t think any further of Sandra’s small, troubled hesitance. Not until years later when he’s got his aim on becoming the Patriarch himself and his pack lacks the trust in his ability to make quick decisions in dire situations, meaning he’d have to climb the ranks through violence, does he think of this night. Short-term, his decision was the soundest for the pack. But long-term it might not have been.

* * *

“I want to be alone with him tonight,” Marlon says. 

“Why?” Aiden protests. He doesn’t like leaving Jed’s side any more than Marlon does. Not that they’ve had to wear themselves as thin as before these last two weeks since they announced Jed’s lost his scent. Other pack members had taken turns staying with Jed. But Marlon, Aiden, Jane, and Michael are the key caretakers. It is generally agreed that those who’d been closest with him the last couple of years were those who should stick around to keep him company.

“Aid, they’re _replacing him_ ,” Marlon hisses through his teeth.

“Let Mar have a night to himself with dad,” Michael says. “It’s their room.” Marlon can barely remember what Michael looks like when he smiles. He either looks tired or hard. Michael bends down by the bed to rub his temple affectionately against Jed’s cheek. “Goodnight, dad. I’m going to see if any of the Os feel for some actions. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He kisses Jed’s temple then leaves the room, squeezing Aiden’s shoulder as he passes. 

Aiden follows him with his gaze narrowed suspiciously until he’s closed the door after himself, then Aiden’s gaze snaps to Marlon heated by anger. “You’re planning something stupid. I can smell it!”

“Am not. Just go.”

“Don’t do it, Mar. Hasn’t he sacrificed enough for the pack already? So what if they’re replacing him? We need a Patriarch and Jed needs a break. If Jed survives―”

“He’ll survive.” Marlon’s voice is hard, brooking no argument.

“Okay, he’ll survive, but think, Mar. Grandpa’s lost two kits in a short timespan. Then the two strongest scent-bonds you can have snap out of existence. Both his mating bond and his bond to his Main. That’s an emotional bomb wreaking more damage than the bombs they dropped on the city. He needs time to process those feelings. He has the right to be heartbroken and figure out how to piece his heart together. It takes time. It isn’t fair to force him back in position prematurely. And he doesn’t have to be. We have people to fill every position now. Do you realise how spoiled we’ve been to have a leader that could do it all? It’s time for our pack to start functioning like a normal pack again. We have people to run the company, people who can care for our home, and people who can bind these two elements together. We don’t need it to be grandpa.”

Marlon is hard-pressed not to roar in Aiden’s face. “They’ll choose Sean.”

“He’s a good choice for a Patriarch, Mar. I for one will cast my vote for him tomorrow.”

Marlon presses his lips into a thin line of determination and nods towards the door. “Get out of here, Aiden.”

Aiden growls in frustration but nevertheless turns and heads towards the door. He stops and turns in the doorway. “Don’t do it, Mar. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t.”

“I’m not admitting to thinking anything. And if you’re so convinced I’m thinking something, why don’t you go get your precious _Sean_ to make him stop me,” Marlon snipes testily.

Aiden rolls his eyes, gives him a vitriolic glare and finally leaves, slamming the door shut behind him. Marlon hurries to lock the door then stands to wait with his ear pressed to the door listening intently to see if Aiden will come back with an adult in tow. He doesn’t. Marlon didn’t really expect him to. Maybe the last comment had been unfair. Aiden hadn’t exactly been fawning over Sean like some others. But still. Marlon has his hackles up about the man.

He finally relaxes and goes to the bed to lie down face to face with Jed. He pulls the comforter a bit higher over Jed’s shoulder. They’ve dressed Jed in soft but warm sweaters and pants. His body temperature is so low it’s frightening and his breaths come so seldom he seems dead. He’s not, or they would have been able to smell him again. A corpse can’t retain scentlessness.

He reaches out and strokes hair out of Jed’s forehead lovingly. “Tomorrow there will be a pack meeting. The last of the homecomers came today, so now all the adults will gather to decide who’ll be the Main, and who’ll be the Patriarch in your stead,” he tells Jed. “Juvies and kits don’t get to be part of the decision, or even present at the meeting.” That irks Marlon to no end. ‘ _If we’d told them the truth from the beginning, we could collectively have agreed to make an exception for you_ ,’ Sandra had told him, ‘ _but as it stands we are too few that think you should be present. And changing our story now would negate the value of our choice to lie_.’ Sandra is generous, calling it ‘their’ lie as if she hadn’t given Marlon the right to choose his own fate. Marlon stands by his choice, but time and again he’d had to grit his teeth in frustration when the homecomers had made assumptions about him that weren’t remotely true. 

Marlon rubs the gland behind his ear until he feels it start to secreting. Then he smears some secretion under Jed’s nose. “We all know who will be our new Main already even if the rank hasn’t been solidified. It’s Jane. I’ll confess that I’m a bit surprised by that. Not because i don’t think she’s up for the task, but because so many of the Os returning are higher ranking than her. It kind of just happened. They look to her to get them settled in and suddenly they defer to her.” It had been interesting to see how Jane sailed up the hierarchy without anybody mentioning it or baring fangs to challenge it. One by one the Os just… deferred. “But it’s been chaotic. We’ve all been separated for so long. I didn’t know our soldiers had been in three different locations. I wasn’t aware they’ve practically formed their own sub-packs with internal packing order. That’s what makes things so chaotic. It’s like merging four packs at once. And that’s not even counting the new members that have never been here at all.” And that’s what probably made Jane sail up the ranks. She might not be the smartest or the strongest, but she’d risen to the occasion to make everyone feel at home, given them a sense that whatever happens they’ll be alright.

Again, Marlon rubs his ear gland to coat his index finger in silky secretion. This time he rests his finger on Jed’s lower lip, pressing lightly so he can see teeth. He’s nervous. “They’re going to replace you as Patriarch. We’re almost certain it’s going to be my second cousin, Sean. When he made it home it was like all the homecomers collectively sighed in relief. I’m not denying that he has leadership skills. Obviously, he has. But I’m not liking how he is with the kits. He’s been away fighting since he was four, going straight from college to the war. I think you could tally up the hours he’s been home since then and get less than two full days. He’s too hard, too strict. He could never replace you. I’m not having it.”

Sean wasn’t cold exactly. He smiled more than Michael did. And many times his smile could be seen in his eyes even if his lips didn’t move. But he demanded discipline and treated the kits like they were soldier recruits rather than rambunctious scamps if he even bothered interacting with them. It was like he had no Alpha instincts at all. Playing kits laughing happily should make an Alpha purr in contentment, but - nothing. If anything it set him on edge. Not in his scent, he just got an air of vigilance. Mostly, he treats kits as if they’re not even there and of no importance to him. Same way he treats Juvies. Like Marlon.

Marlon’s seen him spar. He keeps training every day, fighting with Michael and Aiden mostly since they’re the best fighters. _That_ had come as a surprise. Not that Michael and Sean are up there amongst the best, but that Aiden is. Aiden, who’s just presented and hasn’t seen real combat if you don’t count the street fights hanging with Marlon has pulled him into. Marlon practises almost every day too. He doesn’t like that Sean seems to be a better fighter than him. He barely accepts that Aiden is, so Sean coming in like an upstart besting him makes him angry.

To make it worse he smells as closely related to Marlon as Aiden does despite only sharing the same great grandparents.

Sean should have stayed with grandma where he belongs. He’s a warrior. How anyone can think he’d know how to lead in a peaceful environment eludes Marlon.

They need Jed. No one else.

Marlon rubs his finger back and forth on Jed’s lower lip, watching transfixed trying to gather the courage to go through with it. He’s nervous it won’t work. Afraid it will. He’s not sure what to expect.

“Sean has a problem with our fluent hierarchy here. The homecomers have a strict ranking scale. When Sean heard about me and uncle Dave he suggested it be corrected. As if there was something wrong with Dave outranking people that outrank me. I’m not keen on fighting a bunch of pack members and family just because Sean is uncomfortable.” It’s not quite the way Sean meant it, of course. He hadn’t posed the suggestion to Marlon, but rhetoric is everything and if anyone is going to drop in the hierarchy, it sure as heck isn’t him.

Another rub to coat his finger in secretion before he grabs Jed’s jaw with his other hand (awkwardly, since he’s lying on his side and it’s the arm he’s lying on) digging his fingers into the cheeks to part his mouth, then he holds his breath and puts his coated finger into Jed’s mouth. Even the inside of Jed’s mouth is unnaturally cold. He feels around to find the point he needs to massage and does what Arvid had shown him.

It works.

Jed siphons. Completely reflexively.

Marlon lets out a shaky breath and withdraws his finger to get a new coating and the siphoning stops. He repeats the process. Jed shows no signs of waking up. But after a couple of minutes something happens. The glands behind Jed’s ears start to secrete. Another minute and when Marlon pulls his finger out to get a new coating Jed doesn’t stop siphoning. Marlon’s heart hammers with excitement. _It’s working. It’s working. It’s working._

Once again he puts his finger into Jed’s mouth but this time Jed opens his mouth of his own accord and this time when Marlon pulls his finger back Jed follows, nostrils flared as he’s scenting, eyes still closed. He doesn’t follow the finger, rather, he follows his nose, sniffing until he finds Marlon’s neck. He opens his mouth around the part of Marlon’s throat where he’s coated with silky oil. Marlon’s breathing gets heavier from excitement when he feels a cold tongue drag up, moving in search of the source until it finds his gland. There it rubs and suddenly every gland on Marlon’s body goes into over-activity like opening a dripping tap to let it pour. Jed sucks and Marlon’s heart feels like it could explode in triumph, beating so hard and fast.

Jed closes his mouth to siphon, a heavy weight half on top of Marlon.

This is an ultimate taboo. Marlon knows from what he’s seen and been described that he should be crawling with discomfort by now. He should feel angry and aggressive and give off a smell much like a skunking O. Minors and Alphas can skunk too, they just very rarely have a cause to do so. But Marlon feels no aversion at all. If anything, it’s a pleasurable feeling. Maybe it’s because Jed has no scent? But that theory doesn’t quite hold up since even in kitsplay when mimicking adult behaviour inappropriate touching of the ear glands would put both kits off and have them growl at each other from either side of the room. Rubbing some else’s ear gland with your fingers might not cause too much of a reaction, but touching with your nose or your mouth did. Or so he’s been led to believe. The only time it was acceptable to siphon a minor was with kitlings who were born scentless. Jane had told them that when Michael came back with Luci’s body. She’d gathered all the minors, Juvies and small kits alike, and talked about scentlessness. Explained its reasons and how to counter it. A kitling that is born scentless you have to siphon before you nurse them so they get a sense of belonging and safety. That thought makes Marlon shift forward and twist so he can reach Jed’s throat. He licks up the now freely flowing secretion from Jed’s gland and starts siphoning him back to give him ‘a sense of belonging and safety’.

He gets a taste rather than a smell. It can’t be defined and it tells him exactly nothing. 

“Get an adult.” Jed’s voice is raspy from disuse, barely above a whisper. Marlon twists his head pushing away only far enough to see Jed’s face. Jed has his eyes open. His eyelids are heavy and the muscles in his face are slack, lacking an expression. His eyes are _aware_ , but he’s still not fully there. The gaze is empty, devoid of feelings. Marlon cups the back of Jed’s head to press him back against his neck. Jed’s weak and goes without protest to suck on Marlon’s gland and siphon again. Marlon’s trembling internally, jubilant and thrilled. Again, he siphons Jed back. He’s getting strangely drowsy as if he’s taken a downer. Jed’s mouth and tongue get warmer every time he licks at Marlon’s gland, his body’s heating up to normal temperature. Scents are starting to come through when Marlon siphons. He can taste how Jed’s body is restarting dormant functions one after another, sometimes painfully, even if Jed doesn’t seem to register that he should be in pain.

A few more rounds of siphoning each other and feelings are coming through. Marlon can smell Jed now but he can’t really discern which scent is his and which is Jed’s. He knows what he is feeling which is what he has to go by to know which feelings are Jed’s. Jed’s uneasy and experiencing great mental discomfort, the very opposite of Marlon. When Michael came out of his scentlessness his scent was permeated with sadness. Jed’s chock-full of raw mourning, like a gushing wound compared to an aching scar. Underneath that - a wordless need. Wordless, because Marlon doesn’t have the words to describe it. There are many, many emotions so nuanced it’s like trying to pick out a single thread while looking at a tapestry from 8 feet away. For the first time Marlon has an inkling of what Aiden means every time he says ‘I can smell you’. There’s a growing eagerness in Jed and the more demanding it gets, the more his uneasy discomfort grows.

It’s hard for Marlon to evaluate what’s happening inside Jed while he’s coming back to life, because at the same time Marlon’s experiencing a new high, like if you took the keen hyperfocus you get from taking uppers and mix it with the sedate drowsiness of a downer. He’s floating, drifting in a mental state of bliss, acting on instincts more than using his mental faculties.

Jed’s weak, but getting stronger, more demanding. Both their breathing gets more and more ragged. Marlon’s fangs are dropping without a conscious thought from his part. Jed’s started to grab at him and squeeze, pulling before letting go and gripping him somewhere else. Long fangs dig into his shoulders hard enough to be painful but not to break through fabric and skin. The bites are demanding and persistent. Jed's getting frustrated, uneasiness growing. “I need…” he hisses before siphoning Marlon, then it's back to the biting.

Marlon can feel Jed undulating his hips slowly, even though the comforter and the fabric of their clothes he can feel hardness and heat pressing against his upper thigh. So that's what Jed needs. Marlon lays on his belly and spreads his legs. If that's what’s needed then that's what he'll give. There isn't a single trace of arousal in Jed's scent. Marlon's not dumb. He knows that there's a difference between sex and sex. There’s the sex that’s purely connected to scent bonding with someone and there’s the sex that is about pleasure and recreation. More often than not these two are interchangeable and the same, but not always. And in the divide there are different scents to them. Simply put, sometimes you just have to poke your penis in people to anchor a scent bond without any lust to go along with it. It’s unfortunate but that’s the way of things. Marlon can deal.

“Not you. Get an adult,” Jed says. His eyes are feverish and distant when Marlon throws a side-eye over his shoulder to look at him. Secretion from the temples and behind the ears makes Jed’s cheeks and throat glisten in the lamplight. Where it has collected in droplets it’s not its usual clear colour. Instead it has a milky quality to it, like when you mix a little bit of milk in a glass of water. At least that’s a chapter in the biology book Marlon hasn’t missed. It signifies the production of bonding hormones. Bonding hormones that Juveniles allegedly don’t have. Marlon rebels at the thought of aborting now, at not being what Jed needs. 

He twists onto his side to be able to reach to bite Jed’s shoulder the same way Jed’s bitten his. After a few tugging, demanding bites Jed grunts, licks him and siphons him again then pushes at his shoulder. Marlon follows the push until he’s flat on his belly again. Jed then―with way too much awkward strain telling of his weakness―transfers the comforter to lie on top of Marlon like an extra barrier between them before he crawls on top of Marlon.

In the beginning, Jed’s too weak to do anything more than a slow roll of his hips, lying heavy and comforting weighing down on Marlon, placing bites along his neck and shoulders. But something happens. The unease and discomfort in his scent is step by step overtaken by frustration and aggression. Strength is returning to Jed and he digs his arms under Marlon’s armpits to grip his shoulders to leverage thrusts that get harder and more determined. Marlon cants his hip up to meet them, to give what is needed. He tries to pull away the comforter but it’s firmly pinned between them. While he pushes his ass up to meet Jed’s thrusts he makes the startling discovering that he himself has an erection. It’s not the first time in his life he’s had one. But it’s the first time it has a direct cause instead of just popping up for a few minutes as if his body is running a drill. The bodily functions of the sexual organs, at least the external ones, are developed to be able to function somewhere in the early Juvies. With one major exception. The nerve-endings that are supposed to convey signals of pleasure aren’t activated yet. Touching his penis isn’t more pleasurable than touching his finger. If anything, the penis is slightly numb to touch. Another one of nature’s safeguards against sexual behaviours before the body is ready for it. That’s why he’s startled enough to register it in his hypnotic siphon high.

He purrs an encouragement for Jed, a reassurance that he’s alright with everything that’s happening. Jed elongates his jaws and turns his head to grip Marlon’s neck in a firm but careful grip. It feels like Marlon’s mind turns into jelly. It feels like relief in its most concentrated form, every worry falling away leaving only mental bliss. He isn’t aware of Jed’s knot growing―there are too many layers of fabric and down between them―but he smells the ejaculation and feels Jed sag to lie still on top of him. A few minutes tick by then Jed rolls off him to lie on his belly, tugging at his arm. A silent request that Marlon obliges instinctually. He rolls on top of Jed and ruts lazily, stoned from the siphoning.

He’s not even aware of falling asleep until the sound of voices wakes him up. He’s no longer lying on top of Jed but can feel that Jed’s sitting leaned against the headboard next to his back. And he can smell Jed. That’s the most important thing. He can smell wet hair, metal and clean fabric but no semen. Jed’s washed up and changed clothes while he was out. Back to his three piece suits and expensive jewelry.

“I brought food. I figure you’d be ravenous.” It’s Michael’s voice. Bread, melted butter, meats, honey, greens, juice and coffee. Marlon smells it and it’s making his mouth water.

“You knew,” Jed states flatly. There’s a quiet pause. Michael might have nodded judging by Jed’s answer to the silence. “Then it should have been you, not a Juvenile.”

“If I was capable of making that kind of decisions I would be higher up in the hierarchy, dad.” The bed dips as Michael sits down on it.

Jed grunts followed by the sound of eating. By the sound of it, he really is ravenous. Next time he speaks it’s muffled by a chew. “So why am I here?”

“They’re replacing you. We need you.”

“Uh-uh. Jane will make an excellent Main. She’s been growing into that role for years. And Sean is a good leader. You’ve taken orders from him for a long time and you’ve praised his intelligence and leadership qualities,” Jed says, voice still hard and flat.

Marlon’s startled enough to open his eyes. Did Michael tell him that while Marlon was sleeping or had he heard when Marlon himself spoke? He has his back turned so he doesn’t think they know he’s awake though.

“Sean is a soldier, dad. He’s hard and stern. The kits―” Michael says, echoing Marlon’s own sentiment.

“Jane will outrank him and offset that. They’ll be perfect together. Sean will learn to adapt to a more peaceful state of existence. Everyone who has come home will have to make that adaption. You chose wrong bringing me back.”

“What does that mean?” Michael asks sounding pouty like a kit. “Will you step down?” 

Jed snorts. “After the price you’re having me pay? Hardly. Now, who are the Volkovs?” There’s a brief pause except for a confused _mrrt?_ from Michael. “I’m talking to you now, Mar. Speak up.”

Marlon blinks in startlement then sits up to look at his grandpa. “An Alpha pack of refugees from Soviet.”

“And why did we give them the old stud farm?”

“Hey, it was a gift so we can’t take it back and it’s not like we were using it. The buildings were falling apart and―” Marlon goes on the defence but shuts up when Jed lashes out with an arm and snaps his fingers right in front of his face with a reprimanding gaze.

“I’m not interested in undoing any of your decisions, I want facts and reasons. I’ve been out for a long time and need to get updated,” Jed says with anger lacing through his scent. 

“It has only been two weeks, dad,” Michael comforts.

Jed shakes his head, not taking his eyes off Marlon. “No, it hasn’t. The whole pack would not have been able to have made it home in two weeks. How long, Mar?”

“Three months.”

“The quarterly audit?”

“Done.”

“You mentioned taking losses, how bad is it?”

“Only a small loss. And I dropped the ball on an acquisition I couldn’t figure out why we wanted.”

“How much damage did my reputation take from your budgets?”

“Not much. I do household budgets better than you and this third month Sandra revised the company budget before we signed off on it.”

“She knows the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

“Only Aiden.”

“Good, let’s have it remain that way.”

Michael’s been following their back and forth silently. Now he speaks. “You lost your scent when you found out about Matthew’s death?” There’s a hurt in his question. Marlon gets it. Michael loved Luci like life itself and both Luci and Matthew were Jed’s kits. 

It’s Marlon who answers. He doesn’t want Michael to think it’s about what sibling Jed loved the most. “No. He’s been out since he told grandma we needed her here and she refused, causing his mating bond to fade in two hours.” Marlon turns to look at Jed again. “And you should get new mates. I’m thinking two or three, preferably someone high ranking in every faction. Perhaps also one of the yearling newcomers. It’s been like trying to join together four packs at once and that would ensure better unity as well as preventing what happened with grandma. I’d rather learn how fast a bond can fade by reading it in books the next time.”

“We’ll see about that. Are you two planning on telling people how I woke up?” Michael and Marlon share a glance before shaking their heads.

“Good. And should it get out anyway somehow, you were the one to wake me, not Marlon. Is that clear?” Jed says and pokes Michael in the chest sternly. “I don’t want the truth to be known.”

They both promise. Grandpa is back and that’s what matters. He might smell of mourning so bad it must translate to physical pain and he might be hard and cold right now but he’s back. He’s back. That’s all Marlon asks for.

* * *

The meeting is already well underway when they trail after Jed down the broad stone stairs, footfalls softened by the crimson mat that covers it. It had taken a fairly long time to get Jed up to speed even with him asking to-the-point questions rapid fire, then additional time while Jed meditated to put a lid on his feelings so he no longer smelled as strongly of mourning. Marlon worries it will be too late already. Somehow. He’s not at all sure how people will react.

The doors to the meeting hall are wide open. In the room, a long conference table holds all the highest ranking adults while the rest sit on chairs or stand along the walls. All the kits are outside playing and Aiden has chosen to stand guard by the open door to warn if any kit tries to sneak in. But he’s not looking at the entrance, he’s looking at the stairs and shows no surprise at seeing Jed come down it. He’s been waiting for them. He taps the back of his wrist and mouths ‘just in time’.

From inside the room, they can hear Sean. “...nobody opposes me, I’ll take the honour and do my best to live up to the confidence. I―”

Aiden sidesteps when Jed comes to take the place where Aiden’s been keeping vigilance. Jed leans a shoulder nonchalantly against the doorpost, hands in his pockets, a slight smirk on his face and eyes flaring red. “Bold assumption, thinking you’d meet no opposition,” he says and looks at Sean who’s the only one standing by the conference table. 

There are sharp inhales of breaths and an instant mix of jumbled feelings from the people inside when they see Jed.

Sean stands rooted to the spot, perfect gold locked on fabled red for several seconds without giving away feelings. Two steps behind Jed Marlon holds his breath. To him, it seems like Sean is actually considering a challenge.

Jed reads him the same way. His smirk grows wider, showing fangs. He takes a hand out of his pocket and regards his claws. “Are you so eager to fight me, Sean?” He looks at Sean again and grins dangerously, flare intensifying. “I’m currently physically weaker than I usually am. Who knows? You might stand a chance,” he says flippantly as if he welcomes a challenge.

Sean promptly sits down licking his lips. “Absolutely not, Sir. Pleasantly surprised to see you, that’s all. Glad to have you back. You neatly solved a problem we were having. And I’m delighted to inform you that you have a new Main,” he babbles and makes a sweeping gesture towards Jane. Marlon is calling it babbling despite the smoothness of the delivery only because Sean never talks like that, repeating the message in different ways.

Jed looks at Jane and gives her a warm smile. “Nothing unexpected in that,” he says meaningfully.

He pushes away from the doorpost and makes his way into the room. Nothing in his pose or demeanour gives away that he’s been catatonic or that grief is still tearing him asunder on the inside. As he passes people he’s greeted with brief touches, happy or sympathetic gazes, or in Josh’s case when he gives up his chair at the high end of the table to Jed - delighted yips. Marlon stays watching him from the door beside Aiden.

Jed sits down and looks around with a small smile. “I can’t begin to describe the joy I feel to see you all here, the whole pack gathered again under the roof of our home. You’ve been sorely missed. I also see several new faces amongst us. I bid you a warm welcome and allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jedikiah Williams. Patriarch of the Long Island Williams core where you now belong. As to why you haven’t seen me until now? I experienced a hard fade of a mating bond and had to go have a little lay-down.” He pauses, his smile pulling up in a roguish, lopsided smirk. “I’m afraid I may have overslept.”

Laughter. Marlon watches in wonder how tension releases in the room the way a deep massage soften up muscles. He’s never seen grandpa like this. But the adults must have. This is who he is amongst his equals. A man in his best age, not an ancient being kits perceive adults as.

Jed’s back in his confident posture red eyes taking in his crowd. “That said, a hard fade isn’t very pleasant, and I’d prefer to avoid it in the future. Therefore, once things have settled down a bit I intend to seek new mates. So some of you Os can expect proper courtships from this once again eligible bachelor.” He winks at Jane who grins at him while there are scattered giggles and sniggers. Marlon even hears Aiden chuckle beside him.

“So. Moving on to more serious issues,” Jed says, sobering up his act. “As much as returning home from combat, seeing family and friends again, is a joy, it comes with its own set of problems. Adapting to civilian life isn’t easy. And as some of you may already be experiencing, war follows you home. We need to talk about that.” He pauses to let the gravity of what he wants to say sink in. “Almost every adult in here has experienced combat. None of you will go back to the war unless our area is targeted, we’re drafted, or Jane says otherwise.” Jed looks to Jane who shakes her head.

“Almost every adult in here has experienced combat,” Jed repeats. “We’re all damaged, wounded emotionally and traumatised. As long as you’re in the middle of the fighting it’s easy to not think, to not be affected. It’s now when the peace starts to settle around you that these experiences will start making themselves known in new ways. Therefore I’d like us to discuss what you can expect and what we can do to try to heal these wounds on our souls. I’d also like the kits to be present for that so if someone can go fetch them I’d be grateful.” He phrases it as a request but with a tone that makes it an order.

“Are you sure that is wise?” Sean says. Marlon hates him for questioning Jed even if he does it with no spite or scepticism in his tone or expression, only seeking a confirmation that the order is well-thought out.

“It’s not only wise, but it’s also necessary,” Jed deadpans. “Not only may our kits already suffer from their own traumas, losing family or seeing things in the city that left marks on them, they’re also going to deal with our traumas whether we want them to or not. They need to know why a singing lark triggers panic attacks and uncontrollable fear in someone, why someone else no longer smiles, why many of us wake up drenched in sweat with haunted eyes, why we might suffer from bouts of uncontrollable rage, burst out crying for no apparent reason, jump at shadows, react with harsh violence to a jump scare before we can stop ourselves, drink ourselves into oblivion daily, suffer from insomnia or withdraw to be alone. The list goes on. You might not think it’s important to a minor to know why you have nightmares, but if you fight those nightmares in your sleep, that might have grave consequences for the kit that chose to crawl up in your bed to sleep beside you,” he says and points to the scars on his own face where Marlon clawed him in his sleep ages ago.

“I’m with Jed on this,” Jane says.

Sean nods his acceptance and leans back in his chair.

“I’ll fetch the kits,” Dave offers and frees himself from his place by the wall to head towards the door.

“While we wait we might as well resolve an old conflict,” Jed says and takes a key out of his pocket. He shares a look with Jane who smiles and nods a go-ahead. Jed turns his head to look straight at Marlon. “Congratulations, Mar. You’ve got your room back,” he says and sends the key sliding along the long conference table to Marlon’s side of the room. “You’ll be the only key-holder and,” he looks around, “nobody’s allowed to enter Marlon’s room without his explicit permission.”

Aiden claps a congratulatory hand on Marlon’s shoulder and gives him a little push to go fetch the key, grinning as if he’s the one who is getting his room back.

“How will we know which room is his?” one of the newcomers asks.

“Oh, you’ll _know_ ,” Josh deadpans with joking horror, causing everyone who was there when Marlon lost his room to laugh.

But Marlon meets Jed’s gaze when he walks towards the table with a fake smug smirk on his face, and he sees the look in those red eyes. Jed isn’t giving him his room back, he’s booting Marlon from his…

* * *

It’s silent in Luci’s bedroom when Father stops speaking, the only sound comes from their breathing and the clock on the wall that Luci’s considered throwing out for ages but never does. The uneasiness and the revulsion is thick in everyone’s scent but Father’s. Luci’s the first to speak. “This would be a most interesting sexual assault court case. I wonder who’d be seen as the perpetrator in the eyes of the law?”

That makes Dean stir to life. “I don’t give a shit about the law. What I want to know is how the _fuck_ was that even possible? Seriously, what the hell??”

“Yes,” Michael agrees. “A minor so much as touches your erection and it wilts. In some cases, unless you’re already knotted it can be hard to have sex with a minor in the room. Especially if that minor is named Gabriel and keeps trying to prank you.”

“I dunno if i agree about a minor in the room, but what papa is talking about is a whole ‘nother level. It shouldn’t be fucking possible! I was on the verge of presenting when Cas scented my neck and started rubbing his nose against my gland. Every fibre in my body went ‘ _Nope, Nope, Nope!_ ’ I love Cas to insanity and back but just, fuck no! And you had an adult full-on siphoning you. It’s so fucking sick, man. Fucking hell. _How?!_ ” Dean’s visibly cringing.

Michael nods empathically. “You both should have been skunking so badly it would have caused the others to seek out the source,” he agrees. “It’s biological defense mechanisms that both adults and minors have.”

Marlon chuckles and scoots himself up to sit against the headboard. Dick makes a noise of protest losing his comfortable headrest when Marlon’s shoulder disappears and they all have to reshuffle to again get in a semi-circle around Marlon. “You all know what you do when a kitling is born scentless?”

“You siphon them before you nurse them, to create a feedback loop,” Dick answers. “Much the same as when Dean unlocked my scent.”

“Quite right. I saw it once. A kitling born during the war in our camp. The mother siphoned the kitling before every nursing during three days before the kitling’s scent was unlocked. The mother felt no aversion at any point and neither did the kitling from what I could see,” Marlon explains. “When I asked the mother why she’d siphoned her kit, her answer was ‘I don’t know.’ It was purely instinctual. We have all these instincts and sometimes they contradict and override each other. That’s why Jed could have performed a full bonding intercourse with me, if he hadn’t had enough presence of mind to keep it to the mimicry of one. And I want you to understand that there’s a great difference between waking up from a scentless slumber by yourself, and being forcefully dragged out of it. I’m sure both Dean and Richard can attest to that we still dream, and we’re still partially aware in the catatonic state. We’re continuously processing what put us in that state to begin with. We’re utilizing every mental resource we have to do this, cutting off as many distractions to the brain as we can, trying to find that spark needed to go on living.”

“What is it like?” Mike asks. “I remember when you were like that and it still gives me nightmares at least once a year.”

“It’s like drifting in a void,” Dean answers in Marlon’s stead. “Everything is cold and dark. Like in those sci-fi movies when a dumb fucker opens the door and get sucked into space. The constant closeness and being marked up helps. That’s like floating past the sun. And you’re distantly aware of things happening around you and there were points when I floated to the surface but just didn’t have the will to go all the way. Like, I have this memory of my head in dad’s lap. He was reading a book to me. He wasn’t aware I was aware. I have other memories too, of Sam lying on top of me chatting away about this new friend he’d made. Shit like that makes you hold on. And the idea with the animals is brilliant. Once I came aware only to realize one of our hens was sleeping on my neck. I remember this as the first time I _wanted_ to laugh again. I didn’t. I couldn’t find enough strength in me to do so. But it was like, sure everyone is away doing chores or whatever, but at least I’ve got Elsa clucking softly on me, so hey! Everything is fine.” Dean grins at the memory, a tendril of happiness lacing through the revulsion in his scent.

Marlon chuckles. “Indeed. Jed never said so, but I think he’d been aware a great deal of the time because he knew things I’d told him when he was out. So returning to the topic at hand, when you come out of scentlessness on your own, you step by step start steering against the warmth of the sun to use Dean’s metaphor. When you wake up you have stitched yourself together enough to want to live, to know that you are you, and what that means. Your survival isn’t instinctual, but chosen. Being ripped back into your body, that’s something else. I know that since Aiden did it to me after my Charles had died. I would describe the first weeks of being back as being soulless.”

“And survival instinct the prime driving force,” Raff says. “To manage it Jed’s body knew it had to cement a strong bond as soon as possible. But his mind wasn’t present enough and his body was too weak to get someone else himself. Is that what you’re telling us? The survival instinct bypassed the aversion? Because you acted like an adult, and by siphoning him back you created that feedback loop. And the bonding hormones Juvies do have were enough in his state.”

Marlon purrs, smelling as pleased as he looks. “Quite right, son. Though the real problem wasn’t what happened then, but how what we did bypassed his instincts and gave us an unfulfilled bond that he kept feeling a compulsion to cement all the way up to when I presented and he finally could. His uneasiness and discomfort that I picked up on was mental, caused by the knowledge that I was a Juvie, while his body was telling him to go for it out of need.”

“Yeah, okay fine,” Dean says. “So, like humping someone in your sleep kinda. Poor fucker. And you’re telling us that he had to walk around wanting to bone a Juvie afterwards, and probably felt as ashamed of it as I about―” he cuts off the sentence only to switch lane. “But that still doesn’t explain why _you_ didn’t feel an aversion.”

Marlon chuckles, purring a content all-is-well. “My sexuality didn’t develop normally. Jed blamed himself for it because of what we did. But I believe the early siphoning had nothing to do with it. If it had, I’m convinced Jed couldn’t have siphoned me to begin with, without me having a strong reaction.”

“How do you mean, your sexuality didn’t develop normally?” Dick asks curiously.

“Inside of me, nothing ever changed…”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is, folks. Marlon chooses to do as he does to force Jed back to life, when otherwise Jed might have died from lack of will to live. It's in complete disregard of consent both as it makes Jed do something to a minor he'd never _ever_ do if his brain function wasn't severely impaired and ruled solely by reactive instinct, and because it removes Jed's right to decide for himself if he wants to go on living nor give him the time to grieve properly.
> 
> I'd say that in this chapter we see both the best side of Marlon as well as we see the side of him to be feared, the side he warned Dean of when Dean told the story of the guy that manipulated him. Present day Marlon actively tries not to direct this side of himself towards the people he loves, he's self-aware. Young Marlon isn't, and thinks himself completely justified. 
> 
> Next chapter I'm diving into Marlon's sexuality. Another thing I had planned on skipping out on but I've received questions about asexuality existing in this universe or not, and of course it does. They're human. Marlon isn't ace but he'd be placed on the asexual spectrum for sure. I'm not sure what label to put on him. Grey Ace? Demisexual? I don't know. It does cause him problems, especially in the early years after presenting. I'm 100% certain there are people in this verse that are completely asexual, or only capable of pure bonding sex, or touch averse. All which come with their own set of problems. Anyway, our boy is about to become a man and that brings us closer to what I actually wanted to show you with this story - the reason there are so few Packrunners left. ^^ (It has nothing to do with Marlon's sexuality, I'm just being self-indulgent.)
> 
> Anyway, please tell me if I need to change the major warnings on this fic because of this chapter. Oh, and, I'll be working several 24-hour shifts in short succession so the next update will take a few days at a minimum. Just so you know. :*


	17. Sean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon has trouble adapting to the new pack dynamics, floundering and looking for someone to blame for it. At the same time, those he'd relied upon as his emotional support beams fall away one by one for different reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, I unwittingly lied the last chapter when I said this is the chapter Marlon presents. Ooops? This all just kinda happened. Also, Phillip isn't _quite_ relevant to the story but I love him and would enjoy writing a lot more interactions with him. ^^' I'm not sure if there's going to be any, but I would love them if they happen.
> 
> **WARNING:** Brief mention of suicidal thoughts.

* * *

The year that follows is a great year for most of the pack. Sure, they struggle with their war-induced traumas just like Jed said they’d do, and the homecoming soldiers all have their problems readjusting to civilian life. But all in all, it’s a good time for most. They have enough people to care for both the business and the small community that a pack ultimately is. One by one they find their place in the new order.

Most of them.

Marlon has trouble adjusting to the changes. 

At some point in the past, someone has placed sheets over all the furniture and things in his room so cleaning up years of accumulated dust is quickly done, marking the room up minutely takes longer. Nothing has been moved or changed. His old, stuffed panther is still tucked in under the comforter to sleep, just like Marlon left him. Marlon pulls a chair to the edge of the bed and sits down to watch the toy with an empty, achey feeling behind his breastbone. He's stepped into a time capsule from a time when his parents were still alive, when Luci and Michael's laughter would echo through the corridors and his grandparents were irreversibly in love with each other. He'd never thought he'd feel nostalgic for that time.

He hasn't collected his stuff from grandpa's room yet. The hours after the meeting would have been perfect for that when everyone was busy trying to greet Jed. Marlon thinks he did the right thing for the pack. It brought calm, relief and happiness to most of them. So why is he himself feeling down? 

Marlon sits watching his toy panter until the sun goes down. It's hard to tell time. The old wind-up clock has stopped ticking years ago. It's been dark a long time when there's a careful knock on the door. He turns his head when he hears the long unused hinges creak to announce the intruder. It's Clara.

Marlon raises a finger to his mouth and shushes, then stage whispers and points at the panther in his bed. “Sssh. Be quiet or you'll wake him."

Clara giggles quietly. "You didn't come to dinner. I thought you forgot to eat because you were writing a book again, so I brought food.”

Marlon smiles and pats his thighs, inviting her to come to sit on his lap. It’s so sweet. When Clara’s fully focused on something she’s doing she puts off eating. Like when she’s making bracelets. Marlon has often brought her something to eat then. It’s a behaviour she’s taken after and when he or uncle Dave have skipped meals because they’ve been too busy she has come to them with food. It’s a good thing because when Marlon’s writing he forgets to eat.

Clara comes inside and closes the creaking door after herself with a grin, then swiftly and silently comes over to him, bare feet making no noise. She sits across his lap and hands him a thick, double sandwich and a bottle of soda. He rubs his temple affectionately against her shoulder and takes the offering gratefully. Clara’s getting big and he can smell the first hints of a Juvie marker in her scent. A couple of years down the line she’ll present and have to leave just like Nina. After that, he might never see her again. He hates the thought of it. He can’t believe there’ll come a day when they have to avoid each other because he’ll want to poke his penis in her and she’ll want him to do it. That’s what they say. After the aversion period, the love between relatives will make them want each other and that’s why Os wander. He can’t believe there will ever come a day when he wants to poke his penis in anyone. At all. He’d do it if he has to. Just like he’d allow it if it’s necessary as a sacrifice for someone he loves. He would have let Jed do it. He doesn’t see what the big deal is.

Marlon eats with an arm around Clara to keep her steady, watching his panther sleep. He stops mid-chew. “I don’t want anyone touching him, but I’ve grown out of most of the stuff in here,” he whispers. “Do you want to look through everything to see if there’s anything you want? You can have it, just not him.”

Clara gives him a radiant smile and an eager nod, keeping quiet to not wake the stuffed animal. She leans her head against his shoulder and waits until he’s finished his meal and put the empty bottle on the floor. “Why don’t you smell happy?” she asks then. “Everyone else smells happy except grandpa.”

“He smells sad?”

“He did. But right now he smells angry and horny. They’re in his room _cementing bonds_.” She forms a ring with the fingers on one hand and pokes her index finger on the other in and out of it and rolls her eyes at the strange antics of adults.

Marlon sniggers. “Angry and horny is better than sad,” he says. It’s better than no scent at all.

Clara shrugs. “Are you sad because Aiden’s leaving?”

Marlon sighs. “Yes, I am. Aren’t you?”

Clara nods. “I don’t get why he has to go so soon,” she complains then hunkers down with wide eyes when she realises she raised her voice.

Marlon laughs and bends forward to reach the panther. “Hey, wake up,” he says. “Come sit with us. I’ve missed you and you’ve slept long enough.” He takes the panther and one-handed plays that it jumps over to Clara’s lap to rub its head first against her jaw, then against Marlon’s before he places it in a sitting position on Clara’s lap. It all makes her giggle. “I don’t want him to leave so soon either,” he tells Clara after the panther’s settled and ‘awake’. “But the sooner he’s finished his education the better. We’re lucky that the college year has just started and that we could get him in right away. It’s not that bad. He’ll be home during the breaks and if we miss him we can go visit him.”

“Why does he have to live on campus? It’s not _that_ far. He could live here and still go to college.”

“He could. But he’d lose a lot of time for studying. And living on campus is another lesson he’s supposed to learn. Besides, our home is filled with people who can play with you now that everyone’s back.”

“But everyone isn’t back. Why is everyone pretending that we are all here when we aren’t?”

“Partly because everyone that is still part of the pack is back. Partly because…” he hesitates before he goes on. He considers what to say. “We feel betrayed by those who chose to stay behind. But we don’t want to put blame on them since they chose to stay behind for our sake. Karen believes that if the Union isn’t driven out of America we’ll all be killed. That if they win all Packrunners will be hunted down and forced into slavery or murdered as they’ve been in Soviet. And she might be right. So we don’t talk about them since this feeling of betrayed hurt in our hearts contradicts the loving sacrifice they’re making. It’s easier to pretend it’s alright and focus on reality as it is.”

Clara’s thoughtfully quiet for a while, petting the panther absently. “This is the best thing about you,” she says after a while. “You always answer when I ask something and try to explain. And you listen to me. Like when you were gone for three months. Aiden was so sad. Grandpa too. They didn’t think you’d come back after you’d been gone for a month. And when Aiden’s bond started to fade I told him you’d come back. I told them both they were being stupid. You _always_ come back. That’s the one thing in life you can be certain of. But they wouldn’t listen. They just petted my hair and said of course you’d come back. But they didn’t believe it or their bonds wouldn’t have faded.”

Marlon swallows thickly, eyes suddenly stinging. “I almost didn’t. I didn’t think you wanted me here. That you didn’t need me. And the girl I’d met… it still hurts to think about her… she asked me to come with her and her mate to form a new pack just the three of us. And I wanted to say yes. I really wanted to. But in the end, I couldn’t.”

“Hence, you came back. I told you so,” Clara says matter-of-factly. “Sometimes you come back smelling of blood and rage and sleep in the wardrobe and sometimes you come back like the biggest cuddle monster, but you always come back. I don’t know why they don’t understand that?”

“Maybe because I leave in the first place?” Marlon muses.

“You only leave when we don’t need you. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Marlon laughs, heart growing two sizes. He has trouble wrapping his head around that there’d been a time he hated Clara. He isn’t sure how he gained her blind faith but he knows that as long as he has it, he _will_ come back when he leaves. If only to prove her right in front of the doubting adults. “You want to sleep here tonight? It’s getting late.”

“Okay.”

They get undressed in silence and crawl under the comforter with the panther between them. Marlon reaches out to cut the light and the room is darkened, only illuminated by the silvery light of the moon coming through the windows. He remembers a night just like this. But it had been so cold his breath misted up. He’d been crying and went down to the dungeon to have Arvid soothe him. Aeons ago.

“My classmate Patricia says this is wrong and that we are weird for sleeping in the nude together,” Clara says. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know. She can’t say. But _she’s_ the weird one. She even bathes with clothes on. _On purpose_.”

Marlon sniggers. “Conservative?”

“Yes.”

“They can be strange like that sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with nudity. Besides, bonds form faster and grow stronger if you don’t have clothes on.” 

“ _I_ know that.”

He sniggers at her tone then closes his eyes. “Good night.” This is going to be another one of those sleepless nights. He can feel it. But for Clara’s sake, he’ll pretend to fall asleep like he’s done for her so many times.

Apparently, tonight Clara can’t sleep either. There’s anxiety growing in her scent. Minutes tick by and then she speaks again. “They’re strangers. Not all of them. But most I barely know. It’s a bit scary. I don’t know what to do about all these adults I don’t know that suddenly live with us.”

Marlon opens his eyes and tugs her close. “They’re strangers now, but once you’ll get to know them they won’t be. You know what I think you should do?”

She shakes her head and shifts to use his chest for a pillow.

“I think you should make a list of all of them and divide them into threes. You put one name of someone you know a bit and pair it with two names of someone you don’t. Preferably two people that you think haven’t spent time together while they were away. And every day you march downstairs in that bossy way you have and you tell these three people that today they’re going to play with you. It’s an order, not an option. And you tell them why if they say no. You say strangers scare you and they’re strangers so they better get to know you and this is their assigned day. I don’t think they’ll say no. And if other kits or even adults want to join in you should let them. But don't allow the three whose day it is get away.”

The anxiety in her scent fades when she's presented with a solution. It's perfect, Marlon thinks. It will be another piece of glue to bind the pack together.

“Will you help me make a list?"

“Of course."

Clara seems to settle into contentment after that. He closes his eyes and listens to her breathing even out. Time ticks by slowly as always when he can't sleep. Maybe a full 30 minutes tick by when Clara startles him by talking. “What are you thinking about?"

“I'm thinking about mom and dad. And about Arvid.”

“The scary mercenary? Michael says he's mad."

Marlon smiles and turns his head to snuffle her hair. “Then maybe I am too. I miss him and I keep waiting for life to bring him back to me. You want me to tell you about him?”

"Yes, please.”

They lie awake talking for hours. Clara finally falls asleep when the first hints of pink make the sky blush. Marlon keeps his eyes closed and breathes calmly, hoping this will be one of the nights when his thoughts slow down long enough to drag him under. It isn't. But some rest is better than none even if it isn't sleeping.

When Clara wakes up he helps her make the list, making sure that they mix adults from every group. He notes the day Sean is supposed to play with her. He needs to see that.

He hides out of sight to listen in when Clara marches into the kitchen to make her demands. Jane asks to see the list. “Why are there days without names?"

“ _Duh_. I can't work _every_ day," Clara answers.

It causes laughter. Marlon covers his mouth not to laugh out loud himself.

There's a smile in Jane's voice when she speaks. “This is a really good idea, Clara. If you let me borrow the list today I'll see to that these people are free on their respective days.”

Marlon preens in his place in the shadows.

He keeps feeling smug when ‘the play day’ turns into something the adults look forward to and he sees them check the list to keep track of their day after Jane pins it on the cork board on the wall in the kitchen. Some say they look forward to the day not to have to do chores, but seeing the adults play, Marlon thinks otherwise.

The first months Marlon tries to keep up his involvement in the pack business. But over and over he's waved aside by adults. He keeps overhearing them. He hears them praise Clara's initiative and say she might grow up to be a Main someday, and he hears them question the wisdom of letting ‘someone like Marlon’ spend so much time with the kits. 'What if they take after him?’ It makes him grit his teeth in frustration. It would do no good to tell them it was his idea. It would just make him look petty. When he's at the office they brush his questions aside. 'Don't you worry about that until after college. Leave it to the grown-ups.’

Not Sandra, and not Jed. But Jed… avoids him. Not outright. But he shows a subtle awkwardness around Marlon now. Either that, or he's businesslike. Plus both he and Sandra are short on time. Simply put, others are there to fill the shoes Marlon's been wearing. His anger grows. He's done nothing to make them think he's incompetent or untrustworthy since they came home yet they treat him as if he is and it leaves him no room to prove otherwise.

Jed's bed is never empty. There's a lot of penis poking going on. It's very hard to catch Jed alone at all. One evening Marlon comes into Jed's bedroom to get something he ‘forgot’ in the wardrobe to find Jed lying in bed reading with Sean lying next to him. Sean is on the verge of falling asleep with a lazy smile on his face. The room reeks of sex.

Marlon reacts before he can think better of it, growling a threat, showing his teeth with teethed canines.

Jed doesn't even look up from the book but Sean lifts his head and frowns at him. “What the fuck is your problem?"

“You're in what he perceives as his place," Jed answers and wets a finger to flip side in the book.

Sean's frown smooths out. “Oh," he says and scoots away from Jed then lifts the blanket invitingly. “Come on then. The more the merrier."

Marlon stops growling. Jed's looking at him now, eyes peeking at him over the rim of the reading glasses Marlon's not convinced he needs, no expression on his face. It's a split second decision to shimmy out of his clothes and get into bed between the two of them. Sean cuddles up to him with a content purr marking him up with his temple before he's even properly settled. He smells so much like Aiden Marlon aches. Aiden's absence is like a wet blanket over his days. 

“I very much doubt any of us would fit in the category 'merry’,” Jed remarks dryly.

"He didn't say that. He said merri- _er,_ " Marlon counters. "Which in no way is an indication of the level of merriment.” Rhetoric is everything.

Sean sniggers and Jed smirks and returns to his reading.

“You've got that fucking right," Sean mumbles.

"You curse like a Union Prog," Marlon points out and sniffs Sean's hair.

"Mmm. Too much undercover work to gather intel,” Sean agrees.

Jed reaches out to pet Marlon absentmindedly and something tense within Marlon relaxes so hard it translates to his scent. He purrs, syncing with Sean who hugs him closer, mumbling 'you smell like home’ under his breath. Marlon would find it strange considering how little interaction there's been between them except he feels the same way.

“How do _you_ know what a Union Prog sounds like anyway?” Sean asks in bemusement, lifting his head looking at Marlon with an unfocused gaze as if he just realised what Marlon had said. He's high, Marlon realizes. Siphon high from having bonding sex. It's one of those things that normally pass a minor by no matter how often they see it. Marlon wouldn’t have thought of it if he hadn’t experienced it. But it certainly explains Sean’s uncharacteristically relaxed state.

“We tried keeping two as pets in the dungeon. But as it turns out you have to feed pets so it didn't last long,” Marlon answers. He can’t remember their names but he remembers the one that died from pneumonia cursing like Sean.

Jed actually laughs at that, underlining how seldom Marlon’s heard him laugh since he came back. Even now there’s a cruel edge to it that Jed never used to have. “They were three, as I recall.”

Marlon takes offense. “Hey! Arvid is _not_ a Prog. He’s a Packrunner just like us and he _isn’t_ from the Union.”

“What am I missing?” Sean asks.

“One of them was a mercenary,” Jed says, holding a finger in his book to not lose the point he was reading while he looks at Sean. “And Mar’s first crush.”

“It’s not a crush…” Marlon grumps and burrows his head in between Sean’s pecs. Sean’s too hard. Pecs big enough to compare to female breasts and not enough fat to cover the muscles of his body having lived on rations for so long without coming home to gorge. Hopefully, he’ll put on some comfort weight to make cuddling him actually be comforting. The bed shakes with Jed and Sean’s silent sniggers. Marlon lifts his head again. “I just happen to think everything about him is lovely. That’s not a crush.” That makes both Alphas laugh with a release of happiness in their scent that makes Marlon laugh along. It’s strange. Nceba was a definite crush. He loves her and aches thinking about her. But it’s Arvid he’s waiting for to come back to him.

There’s a knock on the door and Sandra comes inside to smile in bemusement at them. “Now, this is a sight. Our three least approachable Alphas all together giggling.”

“Two Alphas,” Sean corrects.

“Semantics,” Sandra waves him off then directs herself to Jed. “I’ve got the info you asked for.”

“I didn’t need it today. You can take a break now and then, you know?” Jed remarks and accepts the paper she brings him.

“Believe it or not, but I consider doing this fun. Especially compared to what I’ve been doing the last couple of years,” she answers. “However, I’ll go to bed now. It’s past midnight.”

“Want to join us?” Sean offers.

Sandra shakes her head. “Josh has been deep-purring me all day so I’ve got other plans.”

“ _Why_? You’re not in Heat,” Marlon says, once again making the adults laugh.

“I can’t wait until you present to see the reason dawn on you,” Sean chuckles.

Marlon scoffs and once again burrows his nose against Sean’s Aiden-replacing chest. He doesn’t dignify it with an answer. He doubts he’ll ever get the point of recreational penis poking but knows well enough that arguing is futile.

Sean turns over so Marlon’s spooning him about the same time as Jed cuts the light to sleep. Jed slots himself against Marlon like a comforting wall, bringing the release of that elusive sleep Marlon’s always in search of.

He wakes up hours later. The house has that stillness it only has during pre-dawn when everyone’s asleep. Sean is snoring and sleep-purring beside him. He wonders what woke him and realises he’s feeling something he hasn’t felt before except in one exceptional circumstance. An erection. Jed’s lying still close enough for it to press against him. That’s never ever happened before and he’s been sleeping like this beside Jed for years, with or without other adults in bed. Jed’s nose is pushed against his neck and Marlon can hear that he’s scenting with every inhale. Jed’s got his arm around Marlon’s side, hand resting loosely on the mattress between his chest and Sean’s back. One of his fingers is moving minutely, grazing skin. It takes Marlon several seconds to realise that Jed is tracing a hesitant little eight on his skin. Jed’s scent bears traces of tenseness and anxiety.

Marlon lies still, keeping his breathing deep as when he’s sleeping, waiting. Waiting for what, he can’t say. For himself to feel something, for instinct to tell him what to do, for Jed to do something or maybe to figure out why Jed’s so anxious. But nothing happens. Jed’s just sniffing him and giving him that glancing caress as if he’s trying _not_ to touch Marlon which is really odd and bugs Marlon to no end. Jed’s never had any problem touching him before. 

Marlon keeps waiting but still nothing. Jed’s too still. The erection doesn’t go down either. Maybe that’s the problem? Maybe Jed needs to do some poking? After all, he’s been doing an awful lot of it lately. Maybe he _needs_ it? Maybe that’s why he’s so tense?

Marlon pushes his ass against Jed’s erection with a “ _Mrrt?_ ”

Jed withdraws. Decisively he scoots as far away from Marlon he can get then turns around curling in on himself. That wasn’t Marlon's intention. He _wants_ Jed close. Yes, the erection was startling but it didn’t really bother him. He’ll allow it. As long as Jed’s close.

Marlon turns around and reaches for Jed. The wall and nightstand on Jed’s side lights up red from Jed’s flare when Marlon fingers touch his back. Jed growls an icy threat promising violence, freezing Marlon mid-move. The next heartbeat Marlon gets the fright of his life when there’s a sudden move behind him and claws start digging into his shoulder. Instinctively he makes a kit-sound he hasn’t made since he was little playing with Michael and Luci and they started to play a little too roughly with each other with him in the middle. It’s a high-pitched ‘ _yeeep, yeeep_ ’ that translates to ‘don’t hurt me I’m small and defenceless and a threat to no one.’ It’s not remotely true seeing as he’s almost as big as both the Alphas in bed with him but it works and the claws stop digging in. Instead Sean’s half-sitting with one arm in front of Marlon and the other curving protectively around the shoulder his claws has been digging into a heartbeat ago. Sean who’d been deeply asleep had woken up the second Jed started growling. Marlon can feel Sean pull up a leg underneath himself in preparation of a possible launch across Marlon towards Jed. He’s growling a threat of his own back at Jed. A ‘back off or I’ll attack’. It’s cut off in intervals in a way that reveals he’s licking his lips even if you can’t see it in the darkness. It makes the message ‘I know you outrank me but I will still fight you if you don’t stand down.’ It’s not a cold threat like Jed’s is, but a reactive, protective one. His eyes glow golden above Marlon, locked on Jed. 

Marlon stops making the yeeping noise when Jed falls silent. Instead, a hurt, pitiful clucking noise comes unbidden through his throat. Jed starts purring an all-is-well in response and Sean relaxes, slowly sinking down to rest his chin on Marlon’s shoulder, keeping his guarded eyes on Jed.

Marlon quiets down but he can’t keep the hurt, rejected feeling out of his chest. It translates to his scent and he hates that. Jed keeps purring his all-is-well but it isn’t enough because all isn’t well. He can feel Sean’s heartbeat against his skin, pulse slowing down. Once Sean’s calm his eyelids start to fall shut, stopping at half-mast and flare growing fainter. He grows heavy and limp, snoring before his eyes are even fully closed. His head tips to the side and his eyes fall shut.

Jed turns around to face them and Sean’s instantly awake and alert again. “Relax, Sean. I’m not going to hurt him.” Sean watches Jed reach out a hand to interlace his fingers with Marlon's, then glides down to lie beside Marlon instead of partially over him. Sean's asleep again half a minute later. Marlon envies him that. It seems like half the homecomers have trouble sleeping and the other half can fall asleep everywhere and anywhere with a moment's notice. 

You can fit a full grown man in the distance on the bed between Jed and Marlon. The one point of contact―Jed’s warm hand linked with his―can’t begin to bridge it. It’s a bandaid over an axe cut of half a severed leg. But it’s better than nothing. Marlon doesn’t understand what’s wrong. He wants to, so he can fix it. But this night offers no explanation.

Sean pulls him aside later the next day. “About last night… Jedikiah… See, his mind is as sharp as ever but his heart is in a million pieces. He tries to hide it but he’s hurting and sometimes… sometimes when you’re hurting, you just need a little space, you know? He still loves you. It isn’t personal so don’t take that way,” he tries to console Marlon.

Marlon isn’t convinced that’s really the problem but he can’t ask the right questions without breaking his promise to Jed about how Jed woke from his scentlessness. “He doesn’t have any problem being close to you.”

“Yes, he does.”

Marlon shakes his head. “He hasn’t slept alone since he woke up and there’s been a lot of penis poking going on. _A lot_.”

“Penis po―?” Sean huffs and drags a hand through his short hair. “Yes, but there’s a difference between sex and sex,” he says with clear discomfort. 

“I know. Sometimes you’ve got to poke your penis in to confirm a bond, sometimes you’re just horny. It smelled like horny sex to me when I came in last night.”

Sean is looking anywhere but at Marlon, smelling distressed and blushing crimson. “There are many more types of sex than that. You’ll understand once you’ve presented.”

“But I’m asking now. Explain it to me,” Marlon insists, fixating Sean with an intense gaze, secretly enjoying the way it makes the Alpha cringe.

Sean rubs his face with both hands and slowly pulls them down with a why-is-this-happening-to-me look on his face. “Okay. Alright. Um. So sex can be had out of all kinds of feelings. You know how bonding sex and lovemaking are supposedly the two most intimate types of sex? Mostly, they go hand in hand. Not necessarily for a Main or a Patriarch of a big pack such as ours because they also serve as a conduit for the hormones that bind the whole pack together and give us unity in our scent. But mostly for them too because they don’t have to.. Um… exchange fluids?... With everybody. Only with key members and you tend to care deeply about those closest to you.”

“Like a tree trunk with rings where every ring is a faction? And the Main and Patriarch only have to exchange fluids as you called it, with the innermost rings?” Arvid had explained that to him years ago but left sex out of it.

Sean snaps his fingers and points at Marlon. “Yes! That’s it!”

“But grandpa has been poking at all factions so what’s your point?”

All the triumph goes out of Sean and he covers his mouth while exhaling through his nose in frustration. He removes his hand and looks at the floor then huffs in amusement muttering ‘poking at all factions’ to himself before looking up. “Okay. Alright. So that’s one type of sex. But you can have sex when you, in reality, are searching for something else. Like when you’re angry instead of fighting. Or you might want to be with one person but can’t and you have it with someone else instead and it just ends up making you frustrated.”

“So why bother having it at all?”

“Because it still feels good in the moment. Because when you’re having it you don’t have to think, and the thing that’s missing won’t come back to haunt you until after you’re done.”

“So you’re saying that grandpa tries to find a replacement for his lost bond to grandma so he’s poking at everything and gets angry and frustrated when nothing’s enough?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Like you. You smell like Aiden but you’re not him and will never be able to replace him, yet I still burrowed my nose by your chest, even though it really just made me ache for him.”

Sean draws breath to answer, halts, then says “Yes. Like that.” His answer is muted, and there’s a hint of hurt in his eyes that doesn’t translate to his scent.

“So why do you do it? Why do you sleep with him if you know you aren’t enough? That it isn’t you he wants?”

Sean huffs in amusement again and looks away shaking his head smiling humorlessly. “Why did I get saddled with explaining sex to a minor? It would have been easier to teach you how to kill a man,” he complains.

Marlon’s instantly ticked off. It’s a simple enough question, yet again brushed aside because he’s unpresented. “Okay. So do that.”

“What?” Sean looks back at him.

“Teach me how to kill a man,” Marlon demands.

“I can’t do that. Kits and Juvies aren’t supposed to bear that burden.”

Marlon closes the distance between them so they’re almost nose to nose. He lifts his hand to stroke the short hair behind Sean’s ear then lets two fingers trail down while extending his claws just a little bit to press lightly against the jugular. Sean tenses up eyes getting sharp and narrow with full focus on Marlon. “I might need to pop a knot before I can have sex, but any kit can become a murderer, Sean,” Marlon tells him, then turns on his heel and walks away. Behind him, he hears Sean curse his Unionite ‘ _Fuck,_ ’ to himself.

* * *

On Sean's play-day Marlon lurks. Sean is awful at playing horse. He follows directions but doesn't get into the role. Other kits have joined the game so all the adults are assigned the role of horses with Clara as the stern trainer teaching the other kits how to care for the horses. The kits are all too big now so the game is played with the adults upright rather than on all fours. Jumping ropes are threaded behind the adults’ necks and under their armpits as reins.

Marlon sits leaned to a tree nearby pretending to read while he sits judging Sean's inability to behave like a proper horse. When Sean shows utter confusion when Clara tries to lift one of his feet Marlon can't stand watching anymore. He drops the book by the tree, gets up and trots with an airy gait towards Clara. He whinnies loudly like a horse happy to see their owner.

Clara lets go of Sean's leg and turns towards her approaching steed with a jubilant expression. “Lightning!" She exclaims. He lowers his head to her outstretched arms, fully engaged in the roleplay. “Everybody, this is my stud Lightning. He's a mustang I caught in Montana. He's born wild and was a lead stallion. Nobody could ride him but me. I was the only one who he decided to trust. He's the best horse in the world,” she tells the others. Marlon side-eyes Sean smugly. He'd smirk but horses don't smirk.

A kit asks Clara something and Clara leaves Sean and Marlon side by side. Marlon stomps, huffs, throws his head and rolls his eyes to show his eye-whites. Sean watches him with a bemused expression. Marlon sidesteps with the dancing steps of a spirited, annoyed horse, turning his behind towards Sean then kicks him right on the shinbone.

That _had_ to hurt and Sean jumps aside with a pained yelp. Marlon feels petty satisfaction even though he knows what will happen. Half a second later the whooshing sound of a riding crop makes him brace for the sharp pain blossoming on his buttcheek. Clara is a menace who won't tolerate fighting amongst her horses. “No! Keep Indy and Lightning away from each other. They're both stallions.” She presses on Sean's hip with the tip of her riding crop and on his shoulder to get him to take a step to the side but he doesn't budge.

“Are you sure? He seems like an ill-trained, worn out gelding to me,” Marlon remarks.

"Gelding?! I'm no―!"

“No talking amongst the horses,” Clara interrupts Sean decisively. "Olivia, can you pick Indy's hooves? I'll show you how to do it on Lightning.” Of course, all the kits know how the game is played already. But they're playing riding school so Clara bends down to pinch Marlon's ankle to make him lift one leg. She supports his shin bone on her thighs and uses a twig to scrape pebbles and dirt from the sole of his shoe.

This time Sean gets what he's supposed to do and lifts his foot, allowing Olivia to support him when he stands on one leg so she can pick his 'hoof’. He smells annoyed anytime he looks at Marlon and it's gratifying. Little by little Sean gets into being a horse, and an hour later he even 'freaks out’ and refuses to pass by a yellow bucket after having seen Marlon give his rider trouble crossing a puddle ending up taking a giant leap over it. They have dressage training where Marlon curves his neck, imitating chewing on a bit while playing at making advanced dressage moves with airy steps and high knee movements. When the kits praise Marlon and Rosie (another adult) for how good they are Sean shapes up even more. 

Do they look ridiculous? Naturally. But to the kits they're amazing and that's the crowd they need to impress.

When they line up for the race Sean even sidekicks in an effort to get Marlon back (failing). When they race they carry the kits on their backs. Sean has a massive weight advantage with the lithe Olivia as his rider. Clara is getting too heavy for this. It doesn't matter. Marlon would carry Aiden on his back if the stake was beating Sean. And Marlon has the advantage of being used to carrying kits on his back at a gallop. It's an awkward gait for a human.

It's a tight race. They're shoulder to shoulder almost all the way. Sean might have won if he hadn't stumbled. Sean's pissy and trying not to show it. Marlon's smug and doing nothing to hide it.

After lunch, Clara takes them indoors for crafting and Marlon's back to lurking. Now it's just Clara and the adults making necklaces and bracelets. Rosie and Marie are doing just fine, stringing beads of pretty colours on string while happily chatting away with Clara and each other. Sean is struggling. In front of him on the table lies one of Clara's more advanced bracelets that he is trying to duplicate. He's not succeeding very well and as much as he tries to keep it off his face there's more and more anger in his scent every time Marlon inconspicuously wanders past the open door. Clara ignores Sean's growing anger and opts to invest herself in the giggled conversation with the two Os.

The umpteenth time Marlon passes the door the frustration is clear on Sean's face and alongside the anger in his scent there's sadness and distress.

Marlon hurries to his room and rummages around in the treasure drawer of his desk. He finds what he's looking for, grabs it and scurries back to the craft room. He goes into the room and throws a bracelet in front of Sean. “This is the last bracelet Clara did for me," he says.

Sean looks up and reaches for the intricate masterpiece, more sadness in his scent when he inspects it. Marlon grabs a chair and sits down opposite him. He throws another bracelet on the table in front of Sean. “This is the first one she gave me.”

Sean's eyebrows raise in surprise as he looks at Marlon. He lets go of the peak craftsmanship bracelet and reaches for the new one then twirls it thoughtfully between his fingers.

“ _Oh noo!_ Why did you have to show him that one?" Clara complains having discovered what Marlon's showing Sean. “That's soo embarrassing."

“He did it to tell me not to expect to be able to duplicate a master at the first try,” Sean says, looking at Clara. "And that you've been practising for years to get where you are today.” He shifts to look at Marlon and makes a frustrated gesture at the pitiful excuse for a bracelet he’d been working on lying on the table in front of him. “I can’t help it. If I’m to do something I can’t just do it pointlessly. I need the result to be something I can be proud of and I’m a perfectionist.”

Clara scrunches up her face. “Is _that_ why you got angry?”

Sean nods.

Marlon frowns at Clara. “On that note, you’re not noseblind. Why didn’t you ask him?”

Clara shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought he was like you,” she says dismissively and goes to fetch a folder where she keeps instructions for how to make the more intricate jewellery. Rosie and Marie have fallen silent to listen to the discussion curiously. 

“Like Marlon?” Sean asks looking both curious and troubled.

“Yes. You know. He gets randomly angry all the time,” Clara says offhandedly while flipping through her patterns and descriptions. Marlon buys a few any time he goes to buy her new beads. It’s a sound investment. He chooses those he finds most beautiful and she eagerly makes them then gifts at least one to him. “But it’s no use asking him why. He gets mad at such strange things. If it’s you he’s mad at he lets you know so I don’t bother asking anymore.”

“Strange, how?” Marie asks. She’s one of the newcomers while Rosie’s one of those they know fairly well.

“Banks. The government. Politicians. Keith. Conservatives. Or he’s mad at grownups for _not_ being mad at banks, the government, politicians and Conservatives.” Clara looks distracted when the adults chuckle but the pleased note in her scent gives away that she’s happy about saying something funny. “Ah, here it is.” She pulls out a description and puts it in front of Sean. “This one’s really easy. It’s very tedious to make and require a metric tonne of patience but when it’s done it looks like the bee’s knees. Wait, I’ll show you.” She skips to a drawer where she keeps the jewellery she’s made but hasn’t given away and takes up one then comes back to put it in front of Sean. “See? It takes forever to make but it isn’t hard so you won’t fail.” Sean smiles gratefully at her and then studies the description she gave him. She picks up the bracelet Marlon had shown Sean―the first one she’d made―and turns to Marlon. “You didn’t have to show him this. It’s ugly.”

“Yes, it is. It’s sloppy, and the beads don’t match. The colours are horrible together,” Marlon agrees.

“But you wore it! Every day! Why’d you wear it if you think it’s ugly?” Clara asks in bewilderment.

“Because you made it for me. It was a gift. To me. That you’d put effort into making with your own hands. Maybe not that _much_ effort,” he says and snatches his bracelet back to exaggeratedly eye it dubiously to make Clara giggle (which she does). “But it’s mine and they would have had to pry it from my cold dead hands to take it from me. It’s a treasure. An ugly treasure is also a treasure.”

Clara makes a delighted little chirp and bends down to give him an affectionate rub before she goes to take her seat.

“Who’s Keith?” Rosie asks.

“Nobody,” Marlon answers too quickly, instantly annoyed.

“It’s a boy in his class,” Clara’s all too happy to divulge. “He wouldn’t even be going to school if it wasn’t for Keith,” the treacherous little rat continues. “And now Keith’s presenting as an Omega.”

“Shut up, Clara, that’s none of their business,” Marlon snipes. The adults snigger and share knowing looks Marlon doesn’t like one bit.

“Another crush of yours?” Sean asks with a crooked smirk.

“ _No_. He keeps doing better than me and it bugs me. Plus he’s good looking and everyone likes him. On top of that, he isn’t afraid of me like a good Prog should be. He's perfect, like Aiden,” Marlon complains then silently seethes as they all laugh at him.

“He’s perfect, but it’s not a crush, huh?” Sean the bastard is full-on grinning meaningfully at him now.

Marlon gets up with a scowl, giving Sean a little kick on the shinbone for good measures while doing so. “I don’t have to take this turd talk,” he says and stalks out of the room gnashing his teeth at the sniggers that follow him.

That night he’s tossing and turning as usual. Missing Aiden like a hole in his chest and spending way too much time thinking about Keith and his stupid smirk and his stupid everything. At 2:30 AM he gives up and rolls out of bed to get a sandwich and some hot cocoa. When he leaves his room he sees the door to the craft room is open and the lights still on. Frowning he goes there thinking it’s Clara who needs a scolding and to be chased into bed. He stops when he nears and scents the air. It isn’t Clara still there, it’s _Sean_. He sneaks closer and peeks inside. Sean appears oblivious, fully focused on the thread and tiny beads in front of him. The bracelet is nearly done. He smells fairly content even if his brows are wrinkled in deep concentration.

Marlon backs away scowling. Sean said he was a perfectionist. He apparently isn’t one to leave a task unfinished. He’s probably missed dinner, not even noticing his hunger due to concentrating too hard.

Marlon goes down to the kitchen thinking how Sean deserves to starve. He’s a blockhead. He won’t get much sleep either since he has early morning duties. Marlon feels petty contentment about that as he goes about making his late-night snack. He brings the cocoa and the sandwich upstairs but stops outside his door, gaze drawn to the light further down the corridor. He stares at it for a good long minute before he makes an annoyed sound and walks over to the crafts room. Sean startles when Marlon comes in. Marlon puts down the cocoa and sandwich in front of Sean and glares. “It’s nearly 3 AM,” he says then turns on his heel to stomp back to his own room empty handed.

* * *

Marlon’s claimed his dad’s desk in Jed’s office and comes here most days after school. He starts by doing his homework then moves on to read up on corporate laws, business models and strategy, market prognoses and other relevant things he can get his hands on. He also likes to wander around HQ talking to employees, butting in to learn and help out to get a grip on everything that goes into turning the cogwheels in the company. Some days he only stays for an hour, some days he goes home when Sandra or Jed call quitting time late evening. Those days, unless he’s been at his desk reading, he enjoys the surprised looks on their faces when he meets them in the lobby, them having thought he’d left long ago. He tries to be part of everything, including spending a day cleaning, or down in the mailroom. The higher up he tries to nestle himself in, the harder it gets. It’s his own pack thwarting him. “I don’t have time to kitsit,” Ronald says and shoos him away. “Of course, you’re welcome. When it’s time for your college internship,” Frederick says and waves him off. 

Not everyone is dismissive of him. Phillip looks up from his desk when he comes in, pushes his round glasses up his nose and goes “I believe you’re late. You shouldn’t be tardy. No, no. They’ll get mad. You don’t want that. Don’t just stand there, get in!” Before he knows it he’s put on a stool in the corner of the cramped office with piles of dossiers around him and a list of tasks that needs doing. Phillip is one of the pack members that never went to war. Marlon still doesn’t know him very well since Phillip doesn’t socialize much and basically only comes home to eat and sleep. Kits avoid him, Marlon included. He’s old and strange. He talks to himself and will start or end conversations mid-sentence. Marlon’s been quietly working in his corner feeling utterly content to the point that he starts to purr an all-is-well. Phillip startles and looks up at him. “Oh. You’re here. Mar, was it? Yes, yes, very good. Carry on,” he says and goes back to his work. Some time later Marlon starts getting hungry and stops purring. Phillip looks up with a half-crazed gleam in his eyes the moment Marlon stops purring. “It’s the Phineas dossier isn’t it! I _knew_ it!” He gets up from his desk and paces the small space. “They’re out for us. I’ve been telling you all along. You’re a bright kit, Oliver, but you’re much too gullible. You can’t trust these men. All they want is power. _Our_ power.”

Marlon stares at the pacing old man in complete bewilderment. Phillip is _old_. He’s skin and bone and wrinkles with tufts of white hair sticking up haphazardly on his head. He looks like a character out of a book. A caricature of madness. Most people die of old age before they get a chance to become as dry and wrinkled as Phillip. Phillip stops and stares at a point on the wall. He flares bright yellow, drops fangs with impressive speed and growls coldly. Marlon leans forward on his stool to try to see what Phillip is growling at. There’s nothing there except file cabinets and cork boards with too many things pinned up on it - news articles, lists of names, a calendar, random-looking notes, photos. Phillip stops as abruptly as he started and turns around to look at Marlon. “Have we finished building the bomb shelter yet?”

“Yes?” Marlon answers with wide eyes.

“Good. It won’t be long until the Unionites realise they’re beating a dead horse and withdraw to attack from Canada instead. That’s when they’ll make their move. They haven’t dared before. We’re much too powerful. But they’ll draft us then and put their sinister plans into work. You can’t trust them. Mind my words. And stay out of the bog, Oliver. It will seem like a good idea at the time but it isn’t.” He waves a finger at Marlon’s face admonishingly.

“O-okay?”

Phillip nods with a waft of pleased scent. “Good.” His eyes are drawn to his desk and whatever he was working on. “Ah, yes,” he says almost delightedly and goes to sit down to keep working. Marlon sits watching him for several minutes but Phillip doesn’t look up until Marlon gets up to go have dinner. “Oh. You’re here. Mar, was it?” He picks up a folder and holds it out to Marlon. “Take this up to Marion for me.”

“Marion?” Marlon asks while taking the folder. There is no Marion working here.

“Yes. South west corner office top floor. Run along. Hop, hop. Don’t want to be tardy or they’ll get mad. You don’t want them to get mad.”

Marlon nods. “Alright. I’ll be back later,” he says and leaves the room thinking ‘ _What the heck??!_ ’ to himself. Either way, the southwest corner office is Jed’s so he rides the elevator up there and goes in to talk with Jed.

Jed’s briskly typing away on his typewriter but scents the air and looks up with a troubled frown when Marlon walks in. “Is everything alright?” he asks.

“Yes. Sure. But… Phillip sent me to deliver this to Marion?”

The troubled frown on Jed’s face smooths out and is traded for a small, amused smile. He gestures for Marlon to come over. “It’s for me then. Marion’s one of our old Mains. She’s been dead for quite a while.”

Marlon recognises the name from the Pack chronicles but he never thought to consider it in this context. Especially since this building wasn’t even built under her era. “She was only Main for two years wasn’t she?” he asks as he walks over.

“Mhm. Let’s see what he’s got for us this time,” Jed says and takes the folder.

“What is it Phillip does, exactly?” Marlon asks. The dossiers Marlon had been set to go through and sort had seemed relevant enough, although now he’s not so sure anymore.

“Phillip knows what he’s doing,” Jed says and scans the content of the folder.

“Yes, but I don’t and I want to know,” Marlon answers irritably.

Jed looks up and shakes his head with a lopsided small amused quirk to his lips. “No, no. _Phillip_ knows what he’s doing. I have no clue. Sometimes he sends up things of interest, like this.” He gestures towards the open folder. “Sometimes he sends up recipes to pies or a list of numbers or Athena knows what. I gave him a room and free reins to do whatever he wants. It seems to make him happy. It’s hard to say. Either way, as long as he’s here he can’t scare any kits and since he doesn’t have any authority he doesn’t cause damage to the company.”

Marlon peeks over Jed’s shoulder on the content in the folder. It’s a news article from a local newspaper in a town Marlon can’t immediately place. It’s about some giant machine that can count. At first, he wonders why you’d want a giant machine to do the job you could do using a pen and paper, but then he thinks that if you could shrink it and maybe figure out how to make more advanced math, it could come in real handy. Like with Clara’s bracelets, the prototype isn’t necessarily representative of the vision. If you’re doing risk investments you had to be able to guess what could become popular and what had the ability to evolve. “Is this your secret? Why you’ve managed to grow the company so successfully?”

Jed laughs. “Not at all. Phillip sends things like this up maybe once up to six times a year, the rest is either indecipherable to anyone who doesn’t live in his head or it’s complete nonsense. Once he sent me a summary of the history of yarn, another time a little crumpled up note saying ‘Important! Save bees.’ That’s it. No explanation as to which bees and from what they needed saving. And you can’t ask him either because he’ll answer some other question so you’re stuck trying to figure that out instead.”

Marlon hums in disappointment. “So I can’t learn anything from him,” he mutters, to himself, mostly.

“Oh, I think you could. He’s eerily good at detecting patterns and think outside of the frame. If his talents could be steered he’d be the most valuable worker here.”

“He makes me uncomfortable. He’s old and appears very confused. He called me Oliver and told me to stay out of the bog.”

Jed’s smile disappears. “You know what I think? And this is going to sound crazy, but I think he lives in the past, present, and future all at once, having trouble to keep them apart. I know most will not agree with me. I don't know, maybe I'm just superstitious. But when I was a kit, I can't have lived more than six years, Oliver and I were playing in the garden. We were born only a week apart, him and I. So we were playing when Phillip suddenly came stomping towards us. He was angry. He stopped in front of us and waved a finger at Oliver's face. And he said 'Don't go into the bog, Oliver! I told you not to but you didn't listen, foolish boy! Now look at you, you’re dead!’ Then he walked away. Scared the living heck out of me. Oliver wasn’t nearly as bothered and put it out of his mind all too quickly. But two decades later we were fighting in the three-month war against Canada―”

“You’ve been to war?”

Jed chuckles. “Of course. I’m a Williams.” He winks and turns serious again. “The war against Canada was short lived but took a heavy toll on both sides. We were fighting other packs and we had the location of an enemy pack. Oliver led us. He decided to divide us in half to attack them from two sides. I took point through the woods and Oliver led the rest from the other direction, crossing a bog. Oliver didn’t make it out of that bog and for me, that brought back the memory of Phillip’s warning. He could just be deranged. I don’t know. It’s mostly impossible to upkeep a normal conversation with him so…” Jed shrugs.

“So he isn’t just like that because he’s old? It isn’t age related, I mean?”

Jed shakes his head. “No. From what I’ve understood, Phillip’s been strange since he was a kitling. Everything about him is odd. He taught himself to read, write and do calculus but was impossible to teach. Already as a kit he was talking to himself, oblivious to when he was spoken to and uninterested in social contact. He wanders off sometimes and is gone for weeks up to years then comes back as if nothing’s happened. Nobody knows where he’s been and you can’t ask because. Well. Try to have a real conversation with him and you’ll understand. As for age, he didn’t present until his late thirties, has never been in Rut, and he’s nearing two hundred years alive. There has been attempts both to get rid of him and to train him to be normal over the years but Karen and I decided to simply let him be. He seems happy about it. ...I think.”

Marlon looks in the direction of the door with a thoughtful frown. “Perhaps…”

“So what do you think? Should we pump some money into this and see where it takes us?” Jed asks and pats the folder, drawing Marlon’s attention back to him.

“Definitely.”

Marlon will randomly spend days in Phillip’s office even if the stool in the corner is uncomfortable and the whole office is cramped. Jed’s right about that there’s something to be learned by doing that. Not about how to run the business, by all means. But he’s learning _something_. If nothing else, he’s getting to know the one member of the pack nobody really counts as part of the pack but accepts all the same as long as they don’t have to interact with him directly. Marlon worried that the old man would feel alone but a few days with him reveals that he’s anything but. He doesn’t talk to himself, he talks to what seems like a dozen other people. He’ll acknowledge Marlon’s presence, give him jobs to do, even chat a little and get the name right. But then he’ll forget Marlon’s there and go back to whatever he does. Marlon figures out that Phillip loves when Marlon’s in there purring his all-is-well in contentment but if he stops, Phillip will instantly react as if something’s wrong and get upset. Usually, he’ll rant about the Phineas dossier. Marlon asks him what the Phineas dossier is about once when Phillip is pacing and ranting. Phillip stops dead and looks at him with confusion. “Why are you asking me when you were the one to tell me in the first place, Mar?” No. Jed was right. There’s no making sense of Phillip. How do you make sense of statements like “It’s the dead dinosaurs in the sky that will kill us all, did you know that?”? You don’t. Or “Hire his parents.” Whose parents or for what remains a mystery. 

One time he really freaks Marlon out. Marlon comes into his office and Phillip points at a drawer in one of his many cabinets. “It’s in there. The book you asked me to get for you.” He suddenly frowns looking deeply insulted. “Tell that old hag I did no such thing! And she should keep her dirty hands away from my apples.” Then he goes back to his work. Marlon goes to pull out the drawer and finds a book wrapped in paper for mail-shipping under layers of old news articles. The paper wrapping is addressed to Phillip for their old office building and it’s dated to four years before Marlon’s birth. By the looks of it, it hasn’t been opened. He says thank you and takes the book with him when he leaves. Later that evening once he’s home, he sits on a sofa in one of the common rooms to unwrap it. It’s a very old history book written by a Packrunner. He’s heard about the book and tried to get his hands on it since he’s seen it referenced in other old history books. But to his knowledge, all copies had been destroyed or disappeared. The copy he holds in his hands is beaten up, has some water damage and is missing a few pages. It’s still an immense treasure to him so he sits there reverently turning the pages over, reading English old enough to be hard to decipher at times.

Aunt Juliette sits down beside him after turning on the radio. She takes a bite of an apple and peers curiously at him. “What are you reading?”

“It’s a history book about Long Island I got from Phillip. It’s very interesting but sadly it’s missing a few pages,” Marlon answers without looking up.

“Pfft. He probably tore them out himself, that mad old coon.”

_Now_ Marlon looks up to see Juliette take another bite of the apple. His stomach knots up and he's shaken to his very core.

* * *

Phillip is one of the few pack members that treat him like he rightfully belongs at the office. When it comes to employees it’s another matter since he’s an owner. But when Marlon tries to get a foot in at the law department two of the lawyers give him lip. To them, his ownership means nothing. He’s not officially employed and therefore he’s not their client so they’re holding themselves to professional secrecy. Marlon’s furious, storming into Jed’s office demanding they be fired. “You know, you could simply have asked me to go down there and authorize them to speak openly with you? But fair’s fair. They’re very accomplished lawyers. If you can find two new lawyers equal to them, I will replace them,” Jed says. Marlon could have backtracked and asked Jed to go with him to the law department but he’s much too furious. It gives him a problem. Where the heck will he find new, reliable lawyers to hire? He’s not sure. An add in the newspaper won’t cut it at this level. He tucks the problem back into his mind to be solved later, content that he’ll be allowed to give the two currently working for them, the boot.

* * *

Sandra uses Jed’s office in HQ sometimes when he’s out of town or away in meetings. He’s putting a lot of effort in teaching Sandra and Myra some of what he does to make sure there are pack members to cover for him should he suddenly be unavailable again. Myra isn’t quite as comfortable being top dog but Sandra takes it in stride. Myra’s more of a make-things-happen person than decide-what-needs-to-happen. It’s a subtle difference that Marlon didn’t pick up on until he spent time listening in. Today Marlon’s sitting at his desk mulling over the household budget while Sandra’s working at Jed’s desk. Marlon’s trying to fit in expenses to celebrate Diona’s Gift without having to cut back on normal expenses or add more money for the month. Diona isn’t their goddess but she’s a goddess of joy, bonding, and giving. He figures they need as much pleasure as they can get so it’s a good holiday celebrate as it’s about gift-giving, light-hearted games, and penis poking. So, something for everyone. He doubts Athena will take offense. After all, she’s a goddess of warfare and strategy so she should know good morale and strong bonds make any pack more fierce and dangerous when threatened. Marlon’s sure she’s fine with sharing her worshippers for one day. He’s retained the right to make the household budget (Of course, someone has to sign off on it. But still.) and he enjoys it.

Suddenly the door swings open and Sean comes striding briskly into the room. “Hey, Sandra, I need to speak to you ab―” He stops abruptly when he notices Marlon and frowns. “I need to speak with Sandra in private. Get out,” he says and jerks his head towards the door.

“That’s cute. No,” Marlon answers dryly and looks back at what he was doing. Sean’s annoyance reaches his nose and mixes with his own perturbed scent.

Sean huffs and looks at Sandra who has stopped working to watch them passively. “What’s he doing here?”

Marlon answers in Sandra’s stead without looking up. “The household budget.”

“He’s a _Juvie_ ,” Sean says to Sandra almost accusingly.

“Oh, good. You’re not noseblind,” Marlon says in a light, sarcastic tone, pencil scratching away at the paper in front of him.

Sean's starting to get angry. He's easily annoyed but slow to anger. This isn't the first time they've butted heads lately. The other day before school Sean had been standing in the doorway to the kitchen talking and, more importantly, blocking the way. Marlon had waited for Sean to notice him for a few seconds, then tapped his shoulder with a polite ‘ _mrr_ ’ but when he still didn't step aside after throwing a brief look over his shoulder Marlon shoved him out of the way to stomp past.

There was that time Marlon was pacing back and forth under the glass dome in the entrance hall writing a school essay in his head. It’s his usual Modus Operandi to draw the outline in his head before sitting down to write. Sean, of course, doesn’t know that having been away for most of Marlon’s life. Sean came and stopped Marlon in his track, rattling off orders. “The South-east fence needs to be repaired and repainted. I want you to get it done before dinner.”

Marlon scoffed at him and told him that, “A. No it doesn’t. B. I’m currently busy and don’t have time. Ask someone else.”

Sean stepped in close, squaring up challengingly. “Mar, I know you’ve had an easy time living in peace here at home. But insubordination gets people killed. So when I tell you to get something done you get it done,” he’d said, voice tight.

Dave came strolling down the stairs whistling and Marlon, without breaking eye-contact with Sean, said, “Dave. The South-east fence needs to be repaired and repainted before dinner.”

Dave had chirped a good-natured “I’m on it,” and been on his way while Marlon and Sean stood with their gazes locked for several long seconds, Sean narrowing his eyes at him before turning on his heel to stride away.

Those are just two out of many, _many_ small incidents. Plus Sean has the annoying habit of going around before he goes to bed to check where everyone is, counting them in, so to speak. He doesn’t do it every night which bugs Marlon to no end and nights when the soft knock on his door doesn’t come followed by Sean’s head popping in to chirp once before disappearing again Marlon lies awake waiting for it until he has to go check why Sean doesn’t check in on him.

Sandra decides to be proactive when Sean flares and Marlon looks up to lean back in his chair with a smug, careless expression. “Well, isn’t this nice,” she gets up and says in a tone that tells she thinks it’s anything but. “As much as I’d like to sit here and watch while you two compare knot sizes I’d like to get some work done. Sean, let’s go to my office. I’ve done all I need to in here anyway.” She comes around the desk and grabs Sean gently by the arm to steer him out of the room. Naturally, Sean casts one last glance at Marlon over his shoulder with narrowed eyes.

After the door closes behind them Marlon stews in bitter resentment. He doesn’t understand why they don’t want him to learn the trade or help with the company. When they assign him tasks it’s always menial tasks anyone can do or manual labour. He growls at the empty office then goes back to concentrate on the budget.

* * *

Sean is severely bothered by Marlon outranking uncle Dave. Marlon doesn't get what the problem is. As long as everyone knows whose above and below them it's fine. You don't have to know exactly what place below you someone is. It doesn't affect daily life. It's merely a tool to avoid or resolve conflicts.

But apparently, it's a huge hecking problem.

“I've gone easy on you because you’re a minor but enough’s enough! You need to know your fucking place! It’s not natural to have a Juvie outrank an adult who outranks people who outranks the Juvie. I order you to see it corrected and place yourself in the position you _belong_.” Sean has a talent. He can shout without raising his voice. It might seem like an easy thing to do until you’re nose to nose with him getting hit with words that come with the same punch as a powerful roar but barely go above the volume of an ordinary conversation. Marlon’s never seen him this angry. But what he’s seeing is why Sean is such a trusted leader by those who’s been in the field with him. He’s very, very angry but there’s no madness in his eyes. He hasn’t snapped to the point where you make rash, illogical decisions based on fury.

If you asked Marlon right now, he wouldn’t be able to say exactly what sparked the argument. It’s the weekend and he’s deliberately been stepping on Sean’s toes all day. Figuratively, of course. Stepping on his actual toes would have been too obvious. He feels like throwing a fist at Sean’s face but he knows very well that should they fight, he’d lose. No question about it. He would truly have to have Ares on his side pulling strings to stand an honest chance. And should he lose in a fight he’d have to start doing what Sean tells him until he’s up to par to challenge him for rank and that’s not what the pack needs right now. They’re finally starting to feel like one cohesive and harmonious unit. The problem is, the more the pack’s settled, each member finding their place, the more lost Marlon’s felt. At this point not even the kits need him. They _love_ him and will gladly bother him when he’s focused on something but they don’t _need_ him. So what’s the point? He aches for Aiden. He’s regretting turning Nceba and Kwame down. He misses his parents. Last night Sean sat by the piano and inexpertedly played The Flight of Darion throwing Marlon back to his early kit years when he sat in his dad’s lap while his dad’s hands danced over the keys with playful ease and his mom sat beside them playing secondo. Sean isn’t very good at playing piano but he has the same long piano-fingers as Marlon’s dad. After staring at Sean’s fingers laboriously trying to get through a song he probably hadn’t played since kithood Marlon sat down beside him and with the same lack of skill, played the low notes like his mother had taught him. Jed, Jane, Michael and a couple of others had been drawn there to listen. The room smelled of sadness because in the end, they weren’t there so much listening to Sean and Marlon, but remembering the skilled players that would never again sit at that piano. Marlon and Sean had fallen asleep together cuddled on the couch. Sean smells a lot like Aiden but he cuddles like Marlon - like it’s the main course, not a side dish to reading or some other activity as Aiden prefers it. No, if you curl up to Sean you’re in for his undivided attention like it should be. Like Marlon likes it.

The attention he’s getting now is also undivided. He doesn’t like it at all. “This is a pack, Sean, not an army. We have a fluid hierarchy. We’ve always had a fluid hierarchy and it works perfectly fine. You need to get over yourself,” Marlon counters. 

They’re in Jed’s home office standing in the middle of the floor squared up with barely inches to spare. Any closer and their noses will touch. Sean is often by Jed’s side as his second in command. Too often Jed will let him make decisions that concern the pack. Not the business - the pack specifically. Jed’s grooming him to take over just like he’s grooming Sandra and Myra to take over the company. Marlon hates it. Hates that he can’t come into a room Jed’s in to enjoy undisturbed closeness. Someone’s always there. _Sean_ is always there.

Jed sighs behind his desk and leans back in his chair to look tiredly at them. “Enough. You’re giving me a headache. Sean, you know full well that the hierarchy is determined by each individual in a pack. As leaders we can’t promote or demote members unless it comes to expelling a member completely.” Marlon doesn’t have time to feel smug before Jed goes on. “And Marlon, you’re wrong. Our pack has had a militant hierarchy more often than we’ve had a fluid one. We are a pack of warriors. It makes us short-lived with frequent shifts in leadership compared to packs who don’t live by the sword. There are benefits to both types of hierarchy and considering the current state of the country, Sean’s preference might hold merit.” He pauses and regards them thoughtfully stroking a finger over his lips. “Sean, knowing you can’t actually decide a member’s position, do you stand by your order that Marlon, and I quote, ‘see it corrected and place himself in the position he belongs?’”

“Yes.”

Jed looks at Marlon. His scent gives nothing away. “Very well. You will obey that order, Mar. By the time we get home from the office on Monday I expect this to be dealt with.”

It feels like he’s gotten a bucket of ice water thrown in his face. It’s a punch in his gut. He stares at Jed, hoping he’ll take it back, trying to not show how utterly betrayed he feels. But Jed doesn’t take it back, he keeps regarding Marlon with a neutral expression.

“Yes, Sir,” Marlon says at last. “Anything else? Or can I leave now?” 

Jed gestures a go-ahead at the door. Marlon shoulders his way past Sean and leaves.

That night he’s tossing and turning. He can't wrap his head around Jed telling him to step down. He aches for Jed. Aches for Luci. For Michael. But Michael is also distant. Not in the same way as Jed. Michael's missing a spark he used to have. He's putting a lot more effort into training Marlon at hand to hand combat and will keep close to Marlon if he's around. But he doesn't talk much, barely jokes and hardly ever has sex. Often when he hasn't a job to do he'll get stuck staring into nothing.

Marlon misses Nina. Aiden. Arvid. Laurent. Dancing and getting high. He hasn't been to the Sanctuary for months. His stock of drugs is depleted. He wants to get high and forget about everything. What's the point of trying to be an asset to a pack that doesn't want you anyway? He wishes he could be as important to people as they are to him. But he's nothing to nobody.

* * *

Monday evening he climbs one of the pillars flanking the large property gates to sit nonchalantly on top of it in wait for the cars bringing everyone home. His hands are a bit unsteady as he takes the metal cigarette case out of the pocket of Michael’s military pants he’s wearing. The case he’d found in Aiden’s room. The cigarettes are old and dry and taste thereafter. He lights a cigarette with minimal shaking and pockets both lighter and case again, then sits leaned forward in a pretense of comfort, elbows loosely rested on his thighs. Now and then he feels the tickling sensation of blood dripping out of his nose to seep into his mouth or drip onto his forearm. Rank within a pack is first and foremost determined by someone’s leadership ability and willingness to lead - physical strength and ability to fight well are distant seconds. The closer you get to the top the truer that become. It’s dependant on the people in the pack knowing each other and themselves. Many of the homecomers still hold fast to the image of Marlon they’d formed through hearing about him from Karen and others expressing worry or displeasure over his behaviour growing up. That meant resistance. With every challenge he issued a homecomer he’d met more resistance than he should. They’re a pack of warriors, sure, but war these days doesn’t equal hand to hand combat. It’s sabotage, setting traps, shooting with rifles from a distance and pulling back. If that hadn’t been the case then maybe Marlon wouldn’t be able to sit here pretending that he wasn’t bothered by the pain. He hurts hecking everywhere.

He’d chosen rough-fabriced clothes and pelted under them for every fight, all to protect himself as much as possible from claws and bites. It didn’t give a lot of protection against heavy fists and hard kicks. He’s expecting most of his body to be black and blue tomorrow. When he sees the cars coming down the road he briefly fingers one of his ribs to check that it isn’t broken or he might puncture his own lung with what he’s planning. He thinks it may be cracked but as long it stays in one piece he should be fine. He’s fine. Everything’s lovely. Just lovely.

He flares to be seen from a distance and sucks on the cigarette as he waits for the approaching cars. The guard at the gates watches him and doesn’t open the gates automatically as they come close. He hadn’t requested that but it plays well into his little scheme.

The cars stop. Passenger doors swing open. Sean and Jed get out of the same car, looking up at him. Jed’s face is completely blank. Sean looks like he’s trying not to show alarm.

Showtime.

Marlon pinches off the cherry of the cig between two blood crusted fingers, drops the cig then trusts what he’s learned from Laurent and jumps off his high perch into a controlled fall. He wants to scream when he lands on his injured foot but pushes off into a perfect roll to minimize further damage from the fall. He unfolds smoothly into a standing position a pace away from Sean and puts his hands behind his back like a soldier at ease. He meets Sean’s gaze squarely and does his best to look and sound unbothered. “I’ve carried out the order as it was presented to me. The pack hierarchy is no longer fluid. Sir.” He succeeds. There’s nothing in his voice, expression or posture to give away that he wants to lie on the ground and writhe in pain. Nothing gives him away except his scent.

Sean’s lips part. He’s good at keeping emotion in his expression to a minimum but he isn’t trying very hard. There’s a hint of stunned heartbreak in his eyes. “That’s not…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead he swallows audibly, scent colouring with sadness.

“Rhetoric is everything,” Marlon says.

From the other side of the car, Jed speaks, voice matter-of-factly and to the point. “Anyone dead?”

“No, Sir.”

“Severe injuries?”

“Yes, Sir. Frederick and John. They just wouldn’t back down. I’d recommend sending them to the hospital. I would also recommend someone to stay with Rich tonight. He’ll need a lot of comfort. I think this might have triggered bad memories for him.”

Jed nods. “Sandra, will you see to it?” Others have stepped out of their vehicles but Marlon’s ignored them until now, sparing a glance for Sandra and her troubled frown and short nod to Jed before Jed draws his attention again. “And you two, come with me to my office,” he tells Sean and gestures for the guard to open the gate to let the cars pass then walks around the car instead of getting in. Sean and Marlon fall in step behind him walking side by side. Sean keeps side-eyeing him worriedly with each jolt of pain caused by walking on a foot not fit to carry weight. Once they step inside Sean’s scent saturates with distress even if his expression doesn’t change. Dave and Rosie are quietly repairing furniture that’s been damaged during the fights. The whole house smells of fear, distress, pain and other bad emotions. Jed doesn’t acknowledge any of this as he passes by. He’s doing that trick that keeps a lid on the emotions in his scent. 

Clara waylays them on the broad stairs. “Mar! Are you okay? They said it was over now. You’re bleeding!” She cheeps unhappily and reaches for him, halting in fear of hurting him.

Jed stops to let the encounter play out undisturbed.

Marlon stops to smile at Clara. “I’m fine, Clara. You don’t have to worry.”

“You're in pain," she accuses.

Marlon smirks. "Yes, I am. But if I can watch one severed limb burned on the pyre and another one shipped off to college then you can bet I can walk off a little limp as well.” Clara gives him an uncertain smile, unconvinced of his blatant lie. “Besides, you know how much your big brother loves colour. Now I'll be the colour of the rainbow for weeks, no fabric needed,” he adds jokingly and winks. It gets him a little giggle.

“How am I supposed to feel about the others?" she asks after a hesitant pause.

Marlon goes down to a knee not to tower over her. For a brief moment, the pain in his foot and rib steal his breath and makes him break into a cold sweat. He smiles softly at Clara confused to how he's managing to keep the pain off his face. “Like you always do. I don't dislike them or think less of them. We simply did something that was asked of us. We're still one. Are the other kits alright?”

Clara nods. "They're with Jane.”

"Good. Can you do me a favour? You remember the meeting we had about the consequences of war?” Marlon asks and waits for Clara's nod. "Good. I accidentally made Rich re-live bad memories and he's going to need a lot of love and positivity. He might say he wants to be alone but I know you are the best when it comes to ignoring people telling you to take a powder. So I want you to go to him and be your usual menace. Can you do that for me?”

Clara grins. "Yes, I can.”

"Great. Come here.” He holds out his arms and nearly whimpers when she hugs him. “Remember, blood comes off with cold water," he says when he straightens up and sees that he's smeared blood on her. He turns to keep walking to see Sean look at him while Jed's looking at Sean.

Jed turns as soon as Marlon's ready and leads the way to his office. Once they're inside he gestures for Sean to close the door then he sits down behind his desk. Sean and Marlon line up in front of the desk side by side, hands behind their backs.

Jed regards them for a minute before he speaks. “There's a lesson to be learned in this, for the both of you. Not the same lesson though.” He pauses. "Change isn't a bad thing. It isn't necessarily a good thing either but it's inevitable.” He pauses again and looks at Marlon as if it's supposed to mean something to him. It doesn't. Jed sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Fair. Look, both of you, no Main or Patriarch has ever decided to implement a fluid hierarchy. That's something that happens on its own. When you lead a pack you'll sooner or later end up encountering and having to raise kits like Marlon. Like me. Or kits like Mike and Luci who were lovely on their own but hellspawn together. You might end up recruiting members that are like us. Rivers, that will burst every dam put in their way but will water the fields if they get to run freely. From the outside, it will look like they bring chaos…” he pauses again and looks at Sean. “Did you ever stop to consider why I didn't ask Dave to put Marlon in his place when he challenged Dave as a kit?”

Sean remains quiet.

Jed goes ahead and answers his own question. "Two reasons. First of all, it was an official challenge. We never interfere with a rank challenge unless the whole pack rejects the person.”

This is something they already know. It's basic knowledge. Marlon had based his threat to Karen on this - complete rejection by the whole pack. It's not common but if the person has caused massive damage to the pack it could happen. 

“The second reason is that Dave had taken several heavy losses that he wasn't handling well. The moment Mar took on the burden of emotional responsibility for their relationship Dave started to find a shred of harmony within, _and_ Marlon stopped defying him. Trust that hadn't been there before sprung to life between them and as a result all the kits relaxed.”

"A kit should not bear the emotional burden of a relationship with any adult,” Sean states.

"Should? No. But shouldn't isn't the same as can't.” Jed pauses again. "The _third_ reason is that I couldn't tell Dave to kill or maim a kit under our protection.”

Sean frowns in befuddlement.

“Dave did challenge Mar a year later,” Jed continues. "They fought. One of them fought for rank, the other one fought to win or die trying. Guess who?”

Sean side-eyes Marlon.

“Correct. If you had asked any of us who know Mar well we could have told you what would happen if you tried to meddle with Mar's rank. So. Both of you. As a leader of a pack you need to know your members. If you don't know somebody you need to trust those that _do_ know that person. Otherwise, it has consequences. You'll be seeing the fallout in the upcoming days. By my guess, we'll go from 71 people to 64 in a week.” 

_That_ stirs Marlon. “You think those I fought will leave?" he asks with mounting distress.

Jed shakes his head. "No. The only one I worry will leave amongst the combatants, is you. There are a few other who haven't quite settled in who may break off to form a pack of their own. It's been in the air since they came here. They're not used to living in such a big pack and have trouble adapting. Personally, I think we're better off without anyone who can't handle conflict in a pack. We're not actively recruiting because we don't need to. People who joined on the battlefield are welcome to stay but I won't keep them here if they don't fit in. Jane agrees. Now. I'd like to speak with Sean alone. Mar, do you have anything you want to say to Sean before you go?”

Marlon turns his head to find Sean looking at him. "I did what you told me to do." Marlon wants that acknowledged. He knows very well that this isn't what Sean meant.

“You did," Sean gives him.

Marlon nods, looks at Jed to get a confirmation that he can leave.

He keeps his pretense of being fine while he is in shared spaces, washes up and cleans all his wounds. Most are superficial. The pain comes from the inside. His foot, his hip, his rib. And of course, all the bruises. He checks in on everyone he'd fought today, purrs soothingly and marks them affectionately, helps care for their injuries if they're not already seen to. Terry tells him to lay down then cracks his hip for him. One jolt of pain and suddenly his hip isn't bothering him anymore.

All of them welcome his presence and return the brief but doting affection he shows them. Even Rich. This is what Progs have such trouble wrapping their heads around about Primals and Packrunners in particular. Violence is often brief and symbolic and doesn't in itself cause escalation of a conflict if it's preluded by the right behavior. The moment Marlon growled a rank challenge, all of them knew it wasn't personal. If he'd been an adult there would have been penis poking following to confirm bonds and shifts in rank. That's why he's making a round to check on them and mark them up.

Back in his room he finally drops the mask of unbothered and gives into the emotional and physical toll the day's taken. Street fights are one thing. But squaring up to hurt a pack member? He worries for Frederick and John. They're at the hospital and he fervently prays to Ares that he didn't cause them any permanent injuries.

He's never felt so alone. He wonders for the millionth time why he's here. He should have gone with Nceba. He should have taken Arvid's offer to become a mercenary as a kit. He wonders if the Hales would have him. He's always come back home for Aiden but Aiden isn't here anymore.

At 3 AM there's a knock on his door. The door opens and Jed leans a shoulder against the door post. He’s wearing his striped pyjama pants and a T-shirt.

“Are you happy now?" Marlon accuses. Jed could have put a stop to this before it began.

“You want the correct answer or the honest one?” Jed counters with a little smirk. Marlon raises his eyebrows, prompting an answer. “Yes. I am." Marlon must look as shocked as he feels because Jed chuckles humorlessly. “Was it wrong of me to use you as a device to teach Sean a lesson? Naturally. But I saw it as a necessity to stop you from killing each other which I'm convinced would have happened if he held onto his image of you. Then, when you fought he'd have been surprised by the force of nature you are and found himself needing to use lethal force to survive the encounter. As it stands now he’ll think twice before trying to give you a physical smackdown. I knew I could count on you to choose to bend his words. After all, rhetoric is everything.”

Marlon doesn't know what to answer. “You're grooming him to take over," he accuses instead of trying to process what all that means. "You're preparing to die.”

"Yes.”

One flippant word and Marlon feels like throwing up. “You're not going to commit suicide like a darn Prog are you?” he tries to joke but it falls short due to the fear it might be true. Suicide is rare amongst all designations aside from Progressives. Scentlessness is a sign that the person has lost their will to live and for family, friends and/or pack to rally in to bring the person back from the edge. Progs don't lose their scent so deep depression can fly under the radar.

“Tempting." Jed's voice and expression carry no humour, no sarcasm. 

“You're making a joke, right?”

"Not at all. I'm tempted. I long for oblivion like you wouldn't believe. But I won't take my own life. I promise you that.” He huffs and looks away shaking his head with a bitter expression. “If I did you’d probably find a way to drag me back anyway so what’s the point?”

The words sting hurtfully. "Why did you come here?”

Jed holds up a small brown glass bottle. "I come bearing gifts. As well as you hide it, you reek of pain. I figured morphine would do the trick.”

Marlon makes a grabby hand gesture, only realising Jed hadn't stepped over the threshold before because Marlon hadn't invited him. Now he comes inside, closes the door and locks it with the key Marlon left in the keyhole before he comes to sit on the bed. He holds out the little bottle for Marlon but doesn’t let go when Marlon takes it. Marlon looks questioningly at him.

“I'd also like to siphon you to check on your health. John said he heard your ribs crack and Frederick told me he beat you up good.”

"He packs a punch," Marlon admits and curves his neck offering it to Jed. “Have you been to the hospital? Will they be alright?"

To Marlon's disappointment Jed only massages his neck gland with his fingers to get it flowing then siphons the secretion on his fingers. “They'll be alright. Frederick was mostly worried about you. Fair warning, though. I believe he'll be challenging you again as soon as health allows. I suggest you come up with several types of crisis scenarios and ask him what he'd do if he was the highest ranking in those situations then tell him what you'd do and why. Offer him to come up with his own examples for you to respond to. That way there doesn't need to be any bloodshed and you'll know who really deserves to be on top. Sean won't put a finger in between if the hierarchy turns fluid again.”

"Thanks.” It's a good idea. A battle of wit doesn’t send anyone to the hospital.

Jed reaches out to capture more secretion on his fingers and siphons again.

Marlon isn't sure that's really necessary. Once should have told him all he needed to know. “So what's the verdict, doctor Williams?” he jokes.

Jed frowns at him. “Nothing too serious. You might have a nerve pinched in your hip but it feels like that’s fading so I might be wrong. You should stay off your foot as much as possible. And don’t pull stunts like the one you did by the gate. Your rib could break and puncture your lung which you should be well aware of,” he scolds.

Marlon smirks. “Admit it. It was pretty darn impressive.”

Jed huffs in amusement. “Mar, I’m insanely proud of you for all the wrong reasons. Now, here. Down your drugs so you can sleep for a change.” He finally surrenders the morphine to Marlon.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Marlon asks a little too fast when it looks like Jed’s about to get up.

Jed stills and regards him a couple of beats too long, then looks at the door and back at Marlon again before he speaks. “Of course not.”

Marlon exhales a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding.

* * *

He wakes up flat on his back with Jed’s nose inhaling deeply, pressed to his shoulder. Jed’s caressing his chest, fingers tickling back and forth between his pecs. Marlon purrs his contentment about it. He’s high. The pain is still there but down to moderate levels. He opens his eyes to look down at his chest. It’s mottled black and blue, dark patches contrasting the lightness of Jed’s hand in the dusky morning half-light. Something’s not right. Jed’s breaths are careful and shaky and he smells of distress and discomfort. “What’s wrong?” Marlon mumbles. 

“A lot of things.”

“Oh. ...Well that clears it up.” Marlon’s speech is slurred and his head’s full of cotton. He feels good.

“As a Patriarch you’ll feel a compulsion to cement certain bonds in a pack. The longer you wait to do it, the worse it gets. It’s easier with kits and Juvies. All you have to do is mark them, hug them, cuddle them or even just play with them. Adults require more for a bond to be cemented,” Jed says in a low voice.

“I know that.” Marlon frowns in confusion. He knows how bonding works. 

“You don’t get what I’m trying to say, do you?”

Marlon frown deepens in thought. “You’re saying I will have to poke people whether I want to or not after I present? I know that. It’s okay.”

Jed chuckles bitterly. “No. That’s not what I’m saying.” He sighs. “Do you ever hate yourself?”

“Yes. Every time Keith does things better than me. I try and try and try and he _always_ outdoes me. I hate myself for it.”

This time when Jed chuckles it’s with actual humour and a burst of happiness in his scent. “That’s not what your teachers say about you two. According to them you’re equal and it’s about 50/50 whom of you performs the best at any given time. You were cursing so much about him I had to check.”

Marlon tssks. “He’s a darn overachiever, that’s what he is.” Jed sniggers and falls quiet, smiling against the skin of Marlon’s shoulder. “So why do you hate yourself?” Marlon asks.

Jed hesitates, happiness in his scent receding. “For what we did. For what I did to you when you brought me back. I’m an adult. I should have known better. I should have called out for someone else, done _something_. I shouldn’t even have been able to―” Jed cuts off with a frustrated sound. “I don’t know how that was possible and I wasn’t in my right mind, could barely string coherent thoughts together. Still, it shouldn’t have happened and now something’s very wrong. With me. With both of us.”

“What do you mean? What’s wrong with me?” Zero percent of what Jed’s saying makes sense to Marlon. Maybe it’s the drugs? It feels important since it’s causing Jed such distress.

Jed supports himself on an elbow and leans over Marlon. He dips his head to lick at Marlon’s neck below the gland then lifts his head to look Marlon in the eyes. Marlon purrs. Jed shakes his head with a troubled frown then leans down to press a lingering kiss on Marlon’s lips. While kissing on the mouth isn’t all that strange, there’s something off about this. Maybe the way it lingers or how Jed’s lips are ever so slightly parted. It's the kind of kiss he'd expect to get on the forehead, not the lips. He blinks in confusion then mimics Jed, parting his lips a little. Jed growls a short 'stop it' threat and pulls back.

“You don't see anything wrong with what I just did?”

"No? Why? I love you.” Marlon is utterly confused. 

Jed sighs and lays back on the pillow beside Marlon. “I love you too, Mar, but that what I just did, your neck, the kiss, it’s something that should be done between adults. You should have been doing your best to scratch up the other side of my face by now but all I’m getting from you is contentment.” Jed stares up at the ceiling and buries a hand in his short, blond hair. The scent of distress mixes with sadness and saline. His eyes turn glossy but he doesn’t cry. “Somehow, I must have done that to you. It’s my fault. _Somehow_. I know you brought me back because you needed me, not because the pack needed me. But instinct’s misfiring and I’m feeling the compulsion to cement a bond that’s already there so I can’t be near you.”

“So… what you’re saying is… you want to poke me? You can. I’ll allow it.”

Jed chuckles bitterly and closes his eyes. “I distinctly _don’t_ want that. I can’t accept myself as a man that would ever do something like that. It’s one of the most abhorrent crimes against a minor I can imagine and I’d rather die than commit such heinous act. Not only that, our bond already is as strong it can be. It’s fully anchored the way you anchor any bond to a minor. There should be no compulsion at all. And yet, the compulsion to anchor it like an adult is there no matter what my mind, my nose and my heart tells me. So I avoid being alone with you and instead this feeling of rejection grows while the compulsion turns to something feral and needy. It makes me hate myself. It’s a new feeling for me. Self-hate. That I made a flimsy excuse to get to siphon you tonight doesn’t make it better.”

“Okay… I feel like what you’re saying should make sense but it doesn’t. Maybe we should have had this talk while I wasn’t hecking high. What I’m getting out of this is… in addition to selling out to the Conservatives that are out to get us, you’re now also turning into a Prog. That’s lovely.” Even high Marlon’s fully capable of sarcasm even if his delivery makes it sound like he really thinks it’s lovely.

Jed’s silent for all of three beats before he bursts out laughing. “Your mind sure is taking strange paths at the moment,” he states and smiles a smile that looks amused instead of bitter, which is good.

A thought strikes Marlon. “You should go into politics."

Jed tips over to his side and supports his head on his hand, elbow on the mattress. A hand comes back to caress Marlon's chest to Marlon's delight. “We're already paying politicians to do our bidding. But you think I should waste my time doing their job?”

"Yes.”

"Why?”

"Because of the Snatchers.” It makes perfect sense. Other people have money too to buy politicians and in the end, people are prone to do what benefits themselves, politicians included. There are barely any Packrunning politicians so they're basically paying Conservatives to maybe do as they're told. But they're also paying the police like the Snatchers do. And the Snatchers get to roam unmolested. However, if they _were_ the politicians in charge they could fire the cops who took bribes from Snatchers. And they could be certain laws bent their way rather than trusting Conservatives who don’t honor promises the way Packrunners do.

“The Snatchers, huh?” Jed says with dry amusement. “Seems legit.”

“Mmhm.” Marlon’s eyelids are getting heavy. He’d like to stay awake talking until it’s time to get up and start the day but he’s too exhausted and feels too safe. Too content. He closes his eyes and drifts off almost instantly.

When he wakes up every part of him is pounding and aching. Noon-light stream in through the windows to hit the bed mercilessly making him squint and his eyes water. Jed’s still in bed beside him. He’s lying on his stomach pressing a pillow over the back of his head as if he’s trying to mute a silent scream of frustration. Only their calves are touching.

“Grandpa?”

Jed removes the pillow and lifts his head. There are dark rings under his eyes. He doesn’t look like he’s slept at all. “Yes?”

“Was the morphine a one-time treat, or…?”

Jed gives him a tired smile. “No. Of course not. Stay put. I’ll go get some.”

When Jed gets up he’s tenting his PJs and doesn’t look at Marlon. Marlon wonders if he’s had a strange dream or if they had a talk this night. He vows to ask Jed when he gets back only he never does. Instead, it’s Dave that brings him breakfast and the promised pain relief.

* * *


	18. It's All About Sex...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon presents. It's not the explain it all it promised to be...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally part of a larger chapter that later got divided in three. The other two are done and waiting for my Beta to find time to read. After this chapter things start getting very political and we're getting close to the event that almost eradicated Packrunning as a whole.

* * *

Months of being slowly pushed aside take their toll. When Jed buys an apartment building near HQ and starts to only come home on weekends Marlon has had enough. He’s vibrating for some kind of change. He shaves the sides of his head and cuts the rest short leaving it a bit longer at the front. But a new haircut isn’t enough. Instead, he does what he’s prone to do when he feels unwanted and misunderstood - he seeks refuge at the Sanctuary. He still goes to school and still does the monthly budgets. He can’t let Keith win, and he’d hecking stab someone if they tried to take the budget assignment from him. But aside from dropping into the mystical universe that is Phillip’s office now and then, he stops spending time at the office. At the Sanctuary he’s greeted like a lost son and Laurent is jubilant to see him again after months of letter writing as their only communication. Laurent appreciates him. Marlon often accompanies him while he works, pulling weight for the Hales he isn’t allowed to pull for his own pack. And when he does he starts hearing disturbing rumours the Williams pack is too far from the ground to hear. But it’s just rumours. Someone who’s heard it from someone that heard it from someone else.

Presenting isn't the magical explain-it-all it's promised to be. Instead, it brings more frustration. He still doesn't get why other Alphas go nuts for Omegas in Heat like they’d promised him he would. The greatest difference is that he himself starts getting attention. When he goes to the Sanctuary Os will grind against him when they dance and will open conversations with a certain, coy bend to their neck and the you-may-poke-me-later-if-you-handle-your-cards-right smile he recognises from having seen it on adults all his life, just not directed at him before. Sometimes their intentions pass him right by. More commonly, he pretends they do. His frequent interactions with Progs inside the compound gives him a new kind of appreciation for them because they’re blunt so you don’t have to guess. “Hey, handsome! I’ve got two hours before I need to go to work. Want to come up to my place and screw our brains out?” Just like that. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Except, he doesn’t want that. The third time it happens it’s an O that was in his class last year before she presented and he can’t remember her name. Like many of them, she’s wearing a lot of makeup and scented oils distorting her scent, putting him off. Thanks to her he learns that you need to be diplomatic about turning someone down. “Hey, Mar, you wanna get off together?” 

He reacts before thinking, making a gagging noise. “Ew. No.”

She scoffs and glares at him with surprised offense. “What’s wrong with you?! Did you get dropped on the floor too often as a kitling? You might have presented but you’re not a _real_ Alpha.” She turns on her heel and walks away with her nose in the air. He feels a bit ashamed because he can smell she got hurt and he realises he shouldn’t have shown how disgusted he was by the idea. But the damage is done. 

A lot of damage, it turns out. He hears the whispers in the corridor and feels gazes burn on his back as he passes, sniggers badly subdued following in his wake. “...can’t even get it up…” “...not a real Alpha.”

For the first time ever people have the courage to pick on him. Why shouldn’t they? He’s given them no reason to think they should be afraid of him. He’s never violent in school and the most intimidating thing he’s done is teeth at them. He tries to ignore them. Why should he care what a bunch of Juvies in school think of him? He hopes they’ll tire without a reaction but instead it gets worse each week.

To his surprise, Keith comes to his aid. He’s been turning in his desk to look at Marlon as often as anyone else since the teasing started even if he never made a remark himself. Marlon had assumed his standpoint was the same as the rest of them and it made him irritable, frustrated and hurt since there’s really only one person in the whole school he’s ever had the drive to impress and that's Keith. But one day on his way between one classroom and another his way is blocked by five schoolmates. They’re not even in his class yet they’re ganging up on him, looking down their noses at him with arrogant sneered smirks on their faces, taunting him for his presumed inability to poke someone. The problem is that while fighting them would most likely get them off his back it would also get him expelled. Using his shifting abilities in a violent way no matter the cause would get him expelled. It would confirm all the prejudices they have about Primals. But to win a fight against five people he’d have to, and these are rich people, meaning, harming them would bring legal repercussions. Legal repercussions might impact his pack in a bad way. His hands are effectively tied. 

“Hey! Leave him alone!" Keith comes up behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder while glaring at the bullies.

“ _Oooh_. Jumping in to defend your crush, Keith?" the biggest guy taunts.

"~Keith and Marlon, sitting in a tree~," a girl sing-songs and makes kissing noises.

"You're wasting your time, Keith. That Alpha is broken,” the big guy mocks.

"Just because he didn't want to screw Nora doesn't mean he can't get it up. And maybe he has a girlfriend you don't know about. He's in school focusing on his studies. Which is what you too should be doing, Arnie. Then maybe you would discover the alphabet doesn't begin with a D.”

Marlon sniggers and withholds an appreciative purr. 

The scents of the bullies sour. “Whatever. Good luck with mooning over the broken Alpha,” the big guy says and starts walking away, pulling the others with him. 

Keith remains glaring at their backs until they're gone. Then his face smooths into curiosity instead. “Do you?" When Marlon looks at him in bemusement he clarifies, "Have a girlfriend?”

Marlon shakes his head.

Keith gives him a small smile. “Don't let them get to you, okay? They're just jealous,” he says and squeezes Marlon's shoulder before letting go.

“As they should be," Marlon agrees, withholding another content purr when it makes Keith laugh.

The bullying doesn't stop just because Keith picks Marlon's side, but at least his classmates stay out of it. And Keith will repeat 'don't let them get to you’ if he sees Marlon be picked on.

It would have been easier if it was just a bunch of Progs in school, most of which are Juvies with as little understanding of sex as he has. But it's not.

He overhears a conversation at home that he for once wishes he hadn't. He's on his way to Jane's room to ask a couple of questions concerning the household budget since he knows she wants new kitchen appliances and there are a couple of renovations he thinks they should do. He hears voices coming from the crack of the door. Jed and Jane are in there. 

“I'm worried about him. His sexuality isn't developing normally.” Jane’s voice.

"Oh? It seems to me that almost all his bonds have settled into their adult form,” Jed remarks and a tendril of anxiety laces through the scent coming through the crack in the door.

“Yes, but it’s through siphoning alone. He shows no interest in sex at all. Not even when he’s in a Rut or when the Os are in Heat. I’m worrying that he might have been molested and it might have damaged him somehow.”

“Molested? Would you be so kind as to expand on that?” Jed answers carefully.

“I was thinking, he’s been going to that club since he was far too young. Maybe someone that was too drunk or too high… Or, he goes to a Prog school and you know that noseblindness isn’t uncommon amongst them. Mar looked like a man long before he presented. Maybe someone mistook him for an adult? I’ve read that sexualized interaction between adults and minors can damage their sexual development, and there’s something wrong with Mar. I’m just worried.”

Marlon steps into the room and glares at Jane’s back. “I’m not _broken_ ,” he growls, making her jump in fright and spin around in her chair to face him while Jed leans back passively in his chair. “If you’re so worried about me you could have come to me directly instead of telling people there’s something wrong with me. Why do you care? I’m never going to poke you anyway.” Jane, as one of his primary caregivers growing up, will never hold an allure to him. Many of the other Os in the pack should have, but the only one he’s remotely considered having sex with is Sandra.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m not saying you’re broken. But it isn’t natural to show no sign of interest in sex. I’m worried.”

“Oh, are you now? And you just jumped to conclusion that it must have been the Progs’ fault? The heck with that. Nobody’s ever touched me in a way that I wasn’t a 100 per cent okay with. Did you ever think that maybe I’m waiting for my truemate? Or that maybe I’m not some stupid hecking knothead whose brain won’t function just because someone smells nice? You can go hump a cactus for all I care.” Marlon turns on his heel and stomps out of there, ignoring Jane’s call for him. He doesn’t know where the talk of truemates came from, he doesn’t believe in them. He just wanted her to quit saying things like that about him. If Jane’s talking, then the others surely are too. Which must mean that his whole pack thinks he’s broken. Marlon wants to vomit.

If it was only in school and at home maybe it would have been easier to cope with. But soon enough his friends start ribbing him too. At the Sanctuary he’s playfully heckled. Thankfully not by Laurent and Malicia, but the rest of them start saying he _can’t_ get laid. Teasing him as if he’s somehow bad at catching the interest of Os. Some weekends Aiden skips out of college parties to be with them. Aiden starts introducing him to Os as if he’s trying to help out. But Marlon’s not interested. All he wants is to dance, get drunk or high and hang out. It feels like, for everyone else it’s all about sex. It’s starting to wear him down.

It’s his final semester in school before college. He’s not sure whether to dread the change or welcome it. If Aiden’s to be believed, sex is as important as studies are at college. Currently, in school, most of the teasing comes from a place of ignorance since most people are Juvies still. He dreads the thought of the same teasing being directed at him by adults. The thought frequently puts his stomach in knots.

A thoughtless comment from a classmate while the students file out after the last lesson of the day has Keith needlessly going off in his defence again. “Hey! You don’t know that! Maybe he’s saving himself for a Truemate, or maybe he’s only into guys, or who knows? Maybe he’s a bottom? I don’t want to hear that kind of garbage talk, Lori,” he says scowling, still sitting by his desk. “Especially from someone like you who hasn’t even presented yet.”

Lori looks properly chastised and gives Marlon an apologetic look. “Sorry, Mar. I didn’t mean anything by it.” It’s possible that might be true. Lori’s never been mean. And while she’s never made any friendly overtures as such, when they’ve had group projects in class she’s always been friendly and made sure nobody’s felt excluded. Not even him. But still.

Marlon briefly acknowledges that he heard her but doesn’t dignify her with an answer. He’s seething. He’s so hecking tired of everyone picking on him for his lack of interest in sex. He packs his bag slowly, not wanting to have to deal with anyone, but Keith is also taking his time. When everyone has left Keith turns around in his desk to peer curiously at him. “So… are you?”

"Am I what? I don't believe in Truemates if that's what you are asking.”

"No. Uh…" Keith fumbles with a pencil, appearing nervous. “A bottom? Is that it?"

Marlon hasn't got a clue what that means. It's probably one of those things you are supposed to magically know when you present. He gets defensive. He doesn't want Keith to know how ignorant he is. “I don't see how that is any of your business,” he answers curtly.

Keith's hurt and disappointed by his answer, trying to hide it. Marlon hates that. Hates that he somehow answered wrongly. He doesn't want to be a disappointment to Keith. Keith bends his neck looking at the floor with a huffed little self-deprecating smile. “No. No, of course not. You're right. It's not," he flusters.

Marlon closes his bag and heads for the door, berating himself for being such a failure.

When he passes Keith, Keith grabs his arm. “Wait!" Keith stands up. "I, uh, my parents are out of town this weekend so I'm throwing a party on Saturday. I was wondering if you’d like to come? I live on the fifth floor in that building.” He points out of the window to the building next to the school. “We start around six, seven and go on all night.”

“I don’t know…” Marlon takes a step back, uncomfortable and unsure how to deal with the startling invite. He’s not in the right mood to handle polite social interaction and just wants to get out of here, feeling humiliated as it is by his ignorance at Keith’s bottom question and the constant badgering from all sides about his inadequacy as an Alpha. He just wants to get out of here and be alone.

Keith lets go of his arm at first sign of reluctance. “That’s okay. I understand. I’d like you to come but I get if you don’t want to hang out with a bunch of Progressives. Packrunners and Progressives don’t mix well, right?” Keith jokes with a short, nervously flustered laugh.

Marlon launches into lecturing mood before thinking. “On the contrary, if you look at old history books Packrunners and Progs have always gotten along fairly well. At least if you count what we’ve learned in Origin class as true.” Neither designation mentions each other directly in their history, but Origin has been a marvel for fitting in loose pieces of the puzzle for Marlon. “In our history books you’re mentioned as ‘the traders’, ‘the stunted’, or ‘the strange ones’ and according to maps and dates that can’t have been anyone else than your kind. And―” he cuts off in annoyance and waves a hand dismissively. “Look, if you really are interested in our shared history I’d be happy to tell you about my findings some other time. Right now I’ve got to go. I have things I need to do.”

“Okay. Alright.” Keith smiles. “Catch you later.” Keith gives him an awkward parting wave as Marlon leaves with one backward glance.

* * *

Bothering Sean is still one of Marlon’s favourite pastimes whether it be just glaring disapprovingly from a corner of the room, asking questions he thinks Sean will be uncomfortable answering, or just being in the way. Today he’s in luck and Sean’s briskly crossing under the glass dome just when Marlon comes inside. “Sean!”

Sean stops and turns to face him. He’s not in a hurry despite his brisk walk, Marlon can see it right away in his open expression as he waits for Marlon to speak.

“Since you’re an expert on sex―” Marlon begins.

Sean snorts a snigger, interrupting him. “Alright, who’s the traitor who told on me? I want names,” he jokes with a warm spark in his ice-blue eyes. The same colour as Marlon’s own. Marlon rolls his eyes to hide that he wants to giggle. It wasn't the reaction he anticipated. “Alright,” Sean says and drags a hand over his face as if he’s putting on a mask, switching from a grin to a serious face. “What do you want to know?”

“I got a question today and I gave the wrong answer because I didn’t know what he was talking about. I know I said the wrong thing because he was hurt by it.”

“Okay?”

“I get that I’m magically supposed to know what he meant now that I’ve presented, but I don’t. He asked if I was a bottom. What does that mean?”

Sean's face softens. “You’re not magically supposed to know what that means. We rarely put that question to words. That’s generally a Prog thing to do. But it’s about preferences so I don’t see how you could have answered it wrongly. What did you answer him?”

“I said I didn’t see how it was any of his business.”

Now Sean grins. “Ouch. And he took it like a definite rejection. Okay, I see.”

“So what does it mean?” Marlon repeats.

“A bottom is someone who likes to be fucked. Likewise a top likes to be the one to do the fucking. A verse likes both.”

“So it’s about who does the poking?”

“Mhm,” Sean answers goodnaturedly.

Marlon plays back the conversation with Keith in his head. If he wasn’t asking to be a turdhead he was asking because he was interest and then the hurt and disappointment was probably just like Sean said - Keith felt rejected. Marlon squeezes his eyes shut. “Darn it.”

“Someone you are interested in who asked?” Sean guesses.

“Maybe.”

“Was it… Keith?”

Something about Sean’s voice makes Marlon open his eyes to see Sean grinning teasingly at him. Marlon glares and compresses his lips to a thin line.

Sean sniggers. “So it was Keith. Okay. He’s a Prog, right? That’s good. That makes things easier if you’re interested. Just be straightforward but try not to be too blunt. If real feelings beyond good old horniness are involved it’s harder no matter what designation we are. But the good thing about Progs is that unlike for us the responsibility for a courtship goes two ways.” Sean’s dropped his teasing tone. “For us, it’s up to the Alpha to court the O and to prove we’re good enough for her. Even when all we want is a quick fuck against the nearest tree no O with self-respect would allow you to knot her without a token of courtship. Progs aren’t like that. Both Alphas and Omegas can be the one doing the flirting before a hookup. You turning him down can be seen as playing hard to get. If he’s as hardcore as you make him sound he won’t give up that easily. So cheer up.” He gives Marlon a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Marlon sighs and looks away. “Alright.”

Sean gives him another pat and starts walking away.

“You know what I don’t like about you, Sean?”

Sean stops in his track and turns around expression guarded this time, tense as if he’s ready to take a verbal hit. “Do tell,” he says levelly.

“You’re too hard. It’s like cuddling a washboard,” Marlon complains. “It’s called comfort weight for a reason. Eat something.” Two nights ago they’d slept together in the same bed. During daytime they’re still likely to end in conflict but at night, if you end up in the same bed as Sean, he’s the most affectionate little turd.

Sean’s good mood returns and he lights up with an impish grin. “I have fast metabolism,” he says.

“Then eat a lot of somethings,” Marlon says, scowling.

Sean laughs. “I’ll see what I can do about it,” he says and winks before he’s on his way again, this time with an extra spring in his step and a strong scent of happiness as if Marlon had given him a great compliment instead of critique. Marlon catches himself smiling at the door Sean left through then gets annoyed at himself for it.

* * *

Marlon knocks on the door, wondering for the umpteenth time what the heck he’s doing. He can hear music playing from inside. He knocks again, harder this time. A young woman opens the door. She looks to be around Aiden’s age. She’s wearing a striking, dark blue satin dress decorated with tiny crystals that makes Marlon regret his own recent change of style to functional street and combat wear. She’s also wearing high heels, makeup and crystal hair clips. “Wow,” Marlon says in lieu of hello. “That dress is gorgeous. You look stunning.” He refrains from mentioning how off-putting the scent of the makeup and rose oil she’s wearing is to him. “I’m afraid I might be underdressed. Keith didn’t mention a dress code.” He remembers that Progs are different and adds “I’m Mar, by the way.” They need names as an introduction.

The woman smiles brightly at him. “You sure aren't shy about giving compliments. Welcome," she says and gives him a startling hug. She kisses one of his cheeks and when she goes for the other he returns the cheek kiss hoping he got the custom right. “I'm Gilligan but everyone calls me Jill. Come in. Let's get you something to drink. You give great hugs. Say… you're the Mar from Keith's class, right? Is it true that you are a Long island Williams?” she says as she takes his hand and leads him into the apartment.

“That's my pack," he confirms.

“Wow. Honestly, I thought Keith was joking. Williams isn't an uncommon name.” The corridor leads into the living room where Marlon can smell and hear a lot more people but Jill pulls him into another room―the kitchen―before they get that far. “I've never met a Primal in person before. Could you show me your fangs? I'm sorry, am I being rude? Is that a rude thing to ask? I don't know anything about your customs so if I say something offensive, tell me. It's ignorance. I'm not trying to be mean or anything,” she babbles while pouring him a glass of champagne.

He chuckles in amusement. “It’s not ruder than to ask someone to smile or show you their hand. But dropping fangs may hurt a lot so not everyone will do it on request. However, if you ask a Primal to teeth for you they most definitely won’t say no if you’re polite about it. It’s part of our regular body language.”

She holds out the glass for him. “What does that mean?”

He takes the glass with a smirk and shapes his canines to points. She gasps in delight, scent showing that she isn’t putting on an act. “We do this as an enhancement to what we’re saying, to be compared to using an exclamation mark instead of an ordinary dot. For an instance, if I’d known you were a Primal or even a Conservative I would have teethed when complimenting you since you look so stunning,” he explains and takes a sip of the champagne. 

There’s a small burst of happiness in her already happy scent. “So it’s not a threatening thing? I shouldn’t be afraid when someone does that?”

Marlon shakes his head. “No. It depends on the context. If they do it while telling you to take a powder or responding to an insult, then they’re telling you that they’re ready to escalate a conflict if you don’t back off. Otherwise, no. If they drop fangs it’s another matter. We drop fangs with strong, basic emotions. Fear, anger, or arousal. In case of fear and anger it’s in preparation for violence. But most of our body language that Progs fear so much is to de-escalate conflicts, not the other way around. Even when we do get physical it’s symbolic in most cases. You know...” He mimics a few quick jabs at her without touching keeping his smirk playful. “Bom, bom, and back off. One or the other will show submittance and all is well again. Nobody’s ever shown you the number one way to keep a Primal from hurting you?”

She shakes her head. “No. I grew up in Three Road Crossing. It’s the oldest Progressive town in America and we didn’t have a single non-Prog living there. We moved to this compound when the war drew close and I’ve never left the compound. My parents say it’s too dangerous. I still live with them because it’s too expensive to move out. We all work at the store here so we get a discount on the rent,” she tells him. “In school back home we barely got to learn anything about other designations except about the oppression and lack of equality. Like how the Conservatives oppress their Os and Primal Alphas are seen as less than Omegas?” She tilts the last statement up to a question.

“That oversimplification goes so far as to make it untrue. It’s true that Os are generally seen as better at enduring hardship and emotional turmoil which makes them superior to us. But unlike Conservatives we don’t default an Os rank in our hierarchy based on her gender. Individuality is taken into account as well. So a smart Alpha will be higher ranking than a dumb Omega. Conservatives have this abhorrent practise of barring Os for striving for excellency because their god decided that the Alpha must be superior. Their Os are in best case encouraged, in worse case forced, to keep themselves back not to outdo even the most useless Alpha. Their perimeters of measuring status are vastly different than ours too and is often measured in wealth, rather than traits. It makes it easy to hold back an O if you then make rules that forbid them to own things. Amongst Primals intelligence and cleverness are the most treasured traits.” He realises he sounds like he’s lecturing but she’s listening with keen and open interest so it’s alright. He decides he likes her. “We still hold up a difference between the genders. Take Keith and I, as an example. When we presented as different genders the dynamic shifted because we were no longer in competition with each other and instead it’s up to me as an Alpha to prove I’m good enough for him. From a Primal perspective, that is. It’s my understanding that you don’t see it the same way?” he asks and takes another sip of his drink.

She smiles brightly. “Definitely not. But you mentioned the number one defense against Primals? Could you show me?”

“Naturally. All you do is keep a non-threatening body language, lick your lips while bending your neck to the side head down, avoiding eye contact. Like this.” He shows her. “It works for Conservatives too since they basically have the same body language as us except they keep a lot more of it out of public eye. If you can flare at the same time, you should. Heck, if the only reason you’re being attacked is that someone thinks you’re a Prog, flaring will make them falter even if you smell like a Prog.”

“Smell like a Prog?” she asks and sits down by the kitchen table. He joins her, sitting opposite to her.

“Mhm. There are two ways I can smell if someone is a Prog or not. Makeup and scented oils covering up your own scent, or, if you’re not wearing any, I may suspect you to be a Prog if you smell very little secretion or only have vague scent bonds. The latter will only make me suspect you’re a Prog but it doesn’t have to be true. There could be other reasons for it. Scented oils, on the other hand, is a dead giveaway. No Conservative or Primal in their right mind would try to hide their identity that way. We greet each other by presenting our necks to each other to be sniffed. The moment you put something on with the intention to alter your own scent, you’ll be regarded with suspicion as well as limit any sexual attraction to a minimum no matter how pretty the new smell is. Our sense of smell is our most important sense.” He worries he might have hurt her by telling her this but she only seems fascinated. 

“I didn’t know that. So if I were to ask you out on a date, I shouldn’t be wearing anything scented, or my chances of getting lucky dwindle to none?”

Sean had said to be straightforward but not blunt. “Unfortunately. Rose bushes smell wonderful but I wouldn’t want to have sex with one,” he jokes, smirks lopsidedly, reaches out to give her hand a brief squeeze and winks, trying to soften the blow to the candid rejection.

She laughs. “I see your point.” When Marlon starts retracting his hand she captures it and gives him the classic if-you’re-good-you-can-poke-me-later smile. “So I guess tonight won’t be ending with us between the sheets then?”

“Tonight? ...No,” Marlon answers with an equally flirty expression, heavily implying that another night might yield a different result even if it probably is a lie.

They remain talking, mostly about cultural differences while they play with each other's fingers and flirt. For Marlon it's like playing out a script, acting out behavior he's seen in others but doesn't necessarily get the point of. Strangers come and go into the kitchen, always greeting them with hugs and cheek kisses whether they sit down to talk for a bit or not. Marlon has no problem adapting to that. It doesn't make him uncomfortable.

Several drinks later he moves on into the living room and finds Keith on the couch with two girls, one on either side. Keith lights up when he sees him. “Marlon! You came."

Marlon shrugs with a small smirk, feeling a lot less confident than he'd done in the kitchen. “So it seems." He berates himself for sounding lame. He’s nervous all over again.

One of the girls gives him a sultry smile. “Hey, handsome. Wanna make out?"

Marlon looks down at her in confusion. “Why? I don't love you.”

Keith and the other girl snigger.

"Aww. Don't be like that,” the first girl says and grabs him by the belt. “Come here and give some to mama." She pulls so he falls forward towards her catching himself on the backrest behind her. But then there's an arm snaking around his neck pulling her up to try to stick her tongue in his mouth. He freezes, torn between the instinct to protect himself and not wanting to disappoint Keith by ruining his party, his scent getting a burst of acute distress.

But then, Keith's there between them, shoving them apart, rising pulling Marlon up with him, anger and distress in his scent. “Stop it, Laila. He's already spoken for. Eat something. Drink water. Sober up and learn some manners,” he scolds the girl as he herds Marlon away. He pulls Marlon out of the living room through the corridor, into a room, closes and locks the door. There he spins around to face Marlon. “Phew. That's embarrassing. I'm sorry about that. Laila has had way too much to drink. She'll be mortified by her own behavior tomorrow. Most people on these parties aren't so… so… um, selective, as you are. And she's partially noseblind like most people here so she couldn't smell your distress.”

"Keith,” Marlon interrupts. "It's not your place to apologise for someone else's behavior. Besides, if I hadn't worried about ruining your party by making a scene she wouldn't have been in any doubt of how I felt about it.”

Keith's lips twitch in an uncertain smile. “Okay. Then I will apologise for saying you were spoken for and pulling you in here. People will assume we went in here to, um…” He trails off, cheeks colouring a little.

“It's a fair assumption. I came here tonight because you asked me to, despite expecting more of the harassment I receive in school. But if you mind them thinking you want me that way I can leave the room and dispel―”

"No, no. They already know what I feel about you,” Keith hurries to assure.

Marlon’s lips twitch. "Well then. My only regret is that you didn't pull me into a bathroom where I could wash up. She was wearing an awful scent and it's sticking to me.”

Keith smiles and points behind Marlon. “En suite. The left soap is unscented." 

Marlon turns around to see a door. "Thanks.” He goes in to find a small toilet and wash basin. There are two soaps, one is the standard that is designed to remove scents and the other smells of violets. “Why have you got two soaps?" he asks as he sets to wash the musk off his neck and face.

“It's my mom. She's a Primal convert. She's a lot less affectionate when I or dad use scented products,” Keith answers from the other room. "But I love the scent of violets."

That explains why Keith’s never been afraid of him. Marlon dries off on a towel. “Give your mom my thanks for making my school days more pleasant. Your natural scent is much better than anything a flower can produce,” he says and walks back into the room to find Keith smelling happy and a bit distressed. He's changed shirt. “You've changed?" Marlon says, puzzled.

“Yes. I was sitting beside beside Laila and got her scent on me so I thought…” Keith trails off. He's nervous and flustered.

“Good thinking." Marlon pulls off his own overshirt and throws it into the open door of the toilet to get the last shred of contamination as far away as possible. He can still smell it, of course, but it's too far away to bother him. He sits down on the bottom edge of the bed and looks around. The room is small by his standard but big enough to fit everything you need. Desk, bookcase, wardrobe, bed and two nightstands. The bed too is small. Only big enough to comfortingly fit two people, three if you snuggle closely. Keith sits down at his desk and turns sideways on the chair so he can watch Marlon. The nerves he's showing, the scent of happiness when Marlon implied that he smells good. Sean's right. “You like me," Marlon states.

Keith blushes. “Yes.”

Marlon regards him. “Yet you've never openly flirted with me in school. Why?”

Keith looks away and swallows. "Um. It wouldn't be right. You were being bullied and didn't have any friends in school. Aside from maybe Penny which she's too cowardly to admit. To act like a friend and ally just to get into your pants would in a way make a lie of my alliance and create a dynamic where it would be implied that you'd have to put out to get my support. But I thought, if I could remove you to an environment where everyone is welcoming and polite then the balance would shift and I could… Anyway, it doesn't matter since you said your sexual preferences wasn't my business. But I figured that maybe we could at least be friends.”

It makes Marlon think of Michael explaining to him why he couldn’t knot Arvid while Arvid was a prisoner. “Are you talking about when you asked if I was a bottom?”

"Yes.”

"Okay because I had no idea what you were talking about. If anything, you're one of a handful Os whose business it might actually be.” Marlon takes a deep breath. Be straightforward. Be straightforward. “But Keith, they're right about me. I'm broken.”

Keith tilts his head curiously. "What do you mean?”

"I mean I don't function as I should."

“You can't get it up?”

"Sure, I can. That thing's doing jumping jacks whenever it darn feels like it these days. I mean in my head. Sure, I found you a bit more distracting when you were in Heat. But that barely counts since you're always distracting. For me, since I presented, the only difference is that I don't find the idea of sex repulsive anymore if I imagine myself doing it with the right people. But I have no drive to have it. None. I'm broken. When I fantasize about sleeping with people I fantasize about _sleeping_ with people. I don't even know if I _can_ do the deed.”

"Am I one of the right people?”

"You are.”

Keith smiles at his lap. His scent a jumble of positive emotions. “I thought you hated me.”

Marlon tssks. “I dislike that you are better than me in school. I _hated_ that you weren’t as impressed by me as I was by you. You didn’t even have the courtesy to be afraid of me like everyone else,” he says with a small smirk, confidence returning with the knowledge that Keith likes him.

Keith laughs. “Wow. I’m a better actor than I’ve given myself credit for. I was intimidated by you before I even met you. They announced in school that a Primal was transferring to us and they gave us your name. I went home and told my parents and they got nervous. They told me that if you were from the Long Island Williams family, you were powerful and dangerous beyond comprehension. They didn’t mean physically. They told me not to anger you and mom’s last warning to me before i I went to school on your first day was, ‘Remember, Primals can smell fear’. I was so nervous you wouldn't believe. And then you came. I couldn't see it on your face but you smelled so angry. And I'd imagined a boy but you were already a man. Body of a fighter, strange, colourful clothes, smart, good looking. And anytime anyone looked at you for too long your lips would curve in that small smirk of yours that makes it look like you know something we don't. So you can bet I was both impressed and intimidated by you. And anytime you talked to me I was scared witless that I’d mess up and that it’d cause trouble for my parents.”

It’s Marlon’s turn to laugh. “Really? You’ve never smelled anxious or afraid around me.”

Keith huffs in amusement and looks at his lap with a smile. “I have this trick. It’s, it’s going to sound conceited but, um. Since mom was a Primal and my own sense of smell is very good, at least by Progressive standards, I’m well aware of the emotions I give off. So when it’s important to keep certain emotions out of my scent I have this mantra I repeat in my head. I think, ‘Everybody loves me. I don’t have to try, everybody loves me.’ And I repeat it often enough to believe it. It calms me down and keeps my nerves at bay.”

“It’s not conceited if it’s true.” Marlon winks when Keith huffs again with an embarrassed smile. “My grandpa does something similar. He enters some kind of meditative state that allows him to smell calm even during the most urgent crisis. It’s very useful. But tell me something. I have noticed that many Progs seem to have a working sense of smell and they still don’t react on the input they must be getting. Why?”

“We don’t get taught to interpret emotional scents. As kits most of us understand what we smell instinctually. But we’re taught that it’s rude. You know, like mind reading? And we’re told to not use our sense of smell since it’s so connected to the traits we want to go dormant. So we forget the meanings. The ideal is to be partially noseblind so we can smell if food is rancid, flowers, things like that, but don’t get the input from emotions and scent bonds. Complete noseblindness is a handicap for us too.” Keith chuckles. “I keep thinking that those guys that bully you are going to be in so much trouble if they ever meet you outside of the compound with no witnesses. And they don’t have a clue about it because they don’t smell you or don’t know what the scent means. You’re always so _angry_.”

Marlon smirks. “I’m not angry now, now am I?”

“No… you’re not. You’re excited.” Keith’s smile and twinkle in his eyes echos that excitement.

Marlon nods and pats the bed beside himself inviting Keith. Keith comes and sits down so they’re shoulder to shoulder, warmth bleeding through their clothes. “You smell darn hecking gorgeous,” Marlon tells him holding his gaze with a lopsided smirk.

Keith chuckles, a tad bit of anxiety mixing in with his otherwise positive emotions. “As I understand it, that’s a huge compliment coming from a Primal?”

“It is. You’re a good looking guy, but we prefer someone who smells beautiful even if they look like a toad. You’ve got it all.”

“You’re the one to talk,” Keith says and duffs his shoulder playfully with his own. They grin at each other, holding up eye-contact until the silence starts feeling a bit awkward. Keith’s anxiety grows stronger. “So… do you want to make out?”

“I thought I answered that when Laila asked.”

“No, you didn’t, actually. You said― No, you’re right. I’m sorry,” Keith flusters.

Marlon chuckles with a triumphant feeling in his chest. “Rhetoric is everything. And I didn’t answer that. I asked her why. If I’d answered her it would have been a no. With you? Maybe? I don’t know.” He puts his hand on Keith’s thigh and revels in how it makes Keith’s pulse jump. His own confidence is plummeting because he’s about to open himself up. _Be straightforward._ “This is all uncharted territory for me. I’m not averse to try… with you. I might enjoy it? I enjoy masturbating, after all.” That’s been a nice surprise after presenting. To discover how sensitive his penis got. “But I’ll probably be bad at everything since this doesn’t come natural and I feel…” The words cling in his mouth, not wanting to come out, “...vulnerable. Any sign of mockery and I’ll get defensive and I might become vindictive.”

“I’d never dream of mocking someone for being inexperienced. I’m not exactly an expert either. Just tell me if you don’t like something and we’ll stop,” Keith assures hopefully.

“If we stop… can I spend the night with you anyway?”

Keith smiles. It’s a warm, soft smile, as if Marlon somehow said the sweetest thing. “Just to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“I’d love that.”

Marlon’s heart is trying to beat itself out of his breast cage when he leans in uncertainly for the kissing Keith had requested.

Keith's hand cup the back of his head and he tilts his head to slot their lips together without any type of hesitation. He opens his mouth a little and their tongues touch. It’s… not repulsive. It’s not unpleasant or sticky. But as they kiss more he starts feeling a bit intruded upon. Keith pulls back as soon as he starts being uncomfortable. “Okay, so kissing isn’t your thing,” he states with a breathless huff of self-deprecating amusement. He’s aroused and Marlon can smell that Keith’s starting to get slick already. “I guess we― Ho. Is this normal?” Keith stares at his hand he’d pulled back from Marlon’s head and stares at Marlon’s neck that’s now coated by secretion.

Marlon sniggers. “Completely normal.”

Keith reaches out to capture more secretion on his fingers after a brief look to get permission, then rubs the secretion between his fingers in wonder. “I always imagined it to be more like olive oil or something like that. This isn’t sticky like oil. It feels like liquid silk,” he muses.

“Taste it,” Marlon urges. 

Keith hesitates then licks secretion off his fingers. “It tastes like… like you. That’s the only description I can come up with.”

“Mhm. That’s how we scent bond. If we cuddle or have sex with someone we like our glands start secreting. Yours have gone mostly dormant?” 

Keith nods. “Do you…” He shifts, bites his lips looking at Marlon’s lips, then looks down at his lap with a troubled little frown. He shifts again, takes a deep breath and looks up at Marlon. “Have you ever gotten a blowjob?" he asks with a tone that manages to be both uncertain and determined at the same time.

Marlon shakes his head. "Do you want to give me one?"

“I've fantasized about that so many times,” Keith confesses. “I’ve been with girls mostly because they proposition me more often than guys. So I’ve never done it before myself. But I’ve thought about it. About you.” 

“Then it’ll be the first time for both of us.”

Keith slips down to sit on the floor between Marlon’s legs to look up at him nervously smelling of excitement and arousal. He noses and mouths at Marlon’s crotch outside the pants. The view of that… it makes something happen. Here’s this high-ranking O that their peers look up to and want to please. And he’s on the floor by Marlon’s feet eager and nervously wanting permission to service Marlon. Marlon’s getting aroused by it. Actually aroused, not just getting an erection even if his penis is filling with blood as well. He might not be as broken as he previously thought…

* * *

He’s not broken. He’s fully capable of having and enjoying intercourse. Several times in a row, thank you very much, so everyone who thought otherwise can take a powder. 

They're lying snuggled together, Keith half on top of him, their bodies slowly cooling down. Keith sniffs the air. “Our scents have changed,” he states.

“Mmmhm. That’s a friendship bond so don’t be alarmed,” Marlon agrees, lax and content.

“I’m not. I know what a friendship bond smells like. I’m just not used to them forming so quickly. That’s because of your glands being active, right?” Keith asks but keeps talking, making it a rhetorical question. “I can't believe we'll only be in the same class for two more weeks,” he complains with a content smile. “It feels like I've wasted too much time." 

"Maybe we'll end up with a couple of classes together in college?” Marlon muses.

“I'm not going to college."

“Why not? It isn't that much more expensive than normal school.”

"I know. But with the market as it currently is… my parents earned high wages that allowed them to pay for my tuition. But the company they worked for went bankrupt. They're great at what they do so they're currently freelancing but they don't make as much money as they used to. These are tough times. No, no, no. Don’t get upset. It’s fine. I’ve already got a job starting one week after school. I’m going to be the secretary to the owner of this compound,” Keith says and kisses Marlon’s chest soothingly.

It’s a good thing that Keith isn’t noseblind. Marlon got upset the moment he heard Keith won’t be going to college with him but settles somewhat with the instant reassurance. He’s not happy to hear Keith’s not going but at least Keith isn’t upset about it. “What do your parents do?” he asks and burrows his nose in Keith’s hair to inhale deeply.

“They’re lawyers. Corporate law.”

Marlon hums and closes his eyes. Sated and content sleep is slowly dragging him under.

Only, a few minutes later his sits bolt upright in bed heart hammering, scaring Keith with his sudden alarm. It’s a bit harder to explain to Keith why he’s suddenly so jarred and shook without sounding like a madman. He makes a flimsy excuse about having a nightmare then snuggles closer until the two of them have calmed down. 

How long ago was it since Phillip answered the question he never posed to the older man? A month? Two? ‘Hire his parents.’ That’s what Phillip had said.

* * *

Knowing he can perform Marlon decides to make any teasing stop. He lets him and Keith get caught having sex in school in front of a large group of students to kill the notion of him not being able to get it up. Those who still persist in their teasing he threatens. Not with violence. Of course not. But he threatens their parents continued employment. If Keith hadn’t told him about his parents’ warning he would never have thought to sink low enough to hold the bullies’ parents responsible. But then again, if they’d been Packrunners he would have, so why not? Nobody dares to pick at him in school after that.

At the Sanctuary he always starts by picking up an O for a quick poke. It's not like having sex with Keith. He gets an erection just fine but it feels like a duty, an invasive act that he needs to perform and allow, to keep his friends and pack from any distress. He hates being bad at things so he always asks “How do I make it good for you?" and applies himself the same way he does when he studies anything, with the intention to become the best. Though his wish to get it over with quickly counteracts his intentions. It’s not gross like he’d thought as a kit but he hates having to do it with strangers, having to allow them to touch him and come so close. He learns how to seduce and how to do it fast. Sex with Keith is the only sex that doesn't feel like a duty. They don't have the same preferences in everything. Keith wants to kiss and doesn't want to be knotted. Marlon wants the opposite. But they compromise. Marlon will allow kissing if they’re knotted together and the better they get to know each other the less invasive it feels. Marlon also discovers that he likes to cause pleasure a lot more than he likes to receive it. His true pleasure comes afterwards, cuddling and coddling Keith when Keith’s nothing but sated goo. 

It becomes a regular thing. Once or twice a week he sleeps at Keith’s place when the parents are out of town. That’s why, one morning Marlon wakes up before Keith and goes to the kitchen to make breakfast, he’s surprised to find two other people in the kitchen.

He sucks in a startled breath and blinks at the man and woman sipping coffee by the table. Then he smiles. “You must be the parents. Let me start by saying you’ve done a good job raising your son, and also, thank you,” he says meaningfully.

The man chokes on his coffee, cheeks colouring as he’s trying not to look at Marlon. The woman’s lips twitch with a spark of amusement in her brown eyes. “We are. I’m Joanna and this is Jeffrey. You must be the fabled Marlon Williams?” the woman confirms.

“Fabled? I like that. Yes, I can go for fabled,” Marlon jokes with a wink to Joanna. “Please, call me Mar. I’ve been meaning to speak to you two.” He looks at Jeffrey who still is having trouble looking at him. “I’m sorry, Sir, are you bothered by my nudity? I thought that was a Conservative thing but if you give me a moment I’ll go put something.”

“N-no no, it’s fine,” Jeffrey lies and Joanna laughs at him.

“It’s not a Prog thing, it’s Jeffrey himself that is strangely shy about nudity,” Joanna says with a smile, reaching out to give her mate a reassuring squeeze on the wrist of his cup-wielding hand. “And possibly the stark reminder that you’re porking our son,” she adds.

_That_ must definitely be a Prog thing. “Fair. I’ll go put something on.”

When Marlon comes back they’ve set a plate for him at the table and Jeffrey asks him if he wants tea or coffee. Once he’s seated Jeffrey, much more relaxed now says, “You said you wanted to speak with us?”

“I do, yes. Keith said you’d lost your jobs recently? May I ask why?”

“We were working for a company named Compton Inc―” Jeffrey starts saying but Marlon interrupts him by sucking in air through his teeth.

“Ouch. Well, that’s awkward. I wish Keith would have told me it was our company who put yours out of business. I assure you it had nothing to do with any of you personally.”

“We didn’t think it was. Keith’s only had good things to say about you and the management wasn’t good enough dealing with the market as it is right now,” Joanna tells him and passes him the bread.

“Very well. You’re corporate lawyers, is that correct?”

“We are.”

“In that case, I’ve got a proposition for you…” He tells them about the two lawyers at HQ that angered him and why, as well as Jed’s promise that he could replace them. He offers them the jobs but also tells them that he can only guarantee them the positions, but not that they get to keep the jobs if they prove not to be good enough.

Jed upholds his promise. Marlon gets the satisfaction to be in the room when the two lawyers are fired on the basis of withholding important company information to an owner. They protest that Marlon had been a minor at the time but Jed simply says that Marlon was still an owner with responsibility for the company and withholding information could have caused great damage. Jeffrey and Joanna are hired and Jed tells him he did good as Keith’s parents turn out to be just as competent as Keith had assured they were. Better yet, Keith’s parents now earn enough to be able to afford college for Keith, giving Marlon a given ally once he starts this fall.

* * *

Bonding sex doesn’t come naturally for Marlon even now once he’s started having sex. He loves the whole bonding experience with the siphon high and the way scents mix and become one. But Alpha or Omega, he sort of forgets to do anything but rutting against them at most. And if anyone tries to poke him he gets aggressive and defensive even while siphon high. He’d allow Jed, but Jed’s _still_ avoiding to be alone with him.

One night at the Sanctuary he finds out that Keith isn’t the only one who makes sex enjoyable instead of a duty. Laurent keeps biting his shoulder with fangs half dropped when Marlon starts getting annoyed and aroused by it. He tells Laurent that if he doesn’t stop he’s going to end up hanging from Marlon’s knot. Scent reveals that it was Laurent’s intention to begin with. That shifts their relationship back to something more akin to what it was when they were both Juvies. They start playing a lot more again between Laurent’s pack duties. This time it’s high-speed chases over rooftops, wrestling on beams high up in the air on construction sites, dangerous practises that ends with Marlon capturing and knotting Laurent with a sense of triumph. They learn to move and climb while knotted while ignoring the pain of it, to carry each other’s weight physically. There’s no hint of sickness left in Laurent’s scent anymore, even if lab tests at the hospital hold firm that irreparable damage has been done. Laurent makes sex a fun game and their friendship bond has never been so strong before.

* * *

Marlon stops speaking and shifts to look at Dick, reaching out to stroke a hand over Dick’s hair. Dick’s scent has tinted with a muted sadness that Luci doesn’t quite understand. 

“I know what you’re thinking, Sweetheart,” Marlon tells Dick, “And no. My motivations to sleep with you were for the sake of getting you pregnant so Aiden would mate you, but it didn’t feel like a duty.”

Dick bends his neck with a coy smile and looks up at Marlon through his lashes. “Now, now, dear. No need to spare my feelings. You did what you have to do. I too have used sex to get what I want when I wasn’t attracted to the Alpha in question.”

Luci wants to slap a hand over his face for not getting it. Of course, that would be a sensitive subject to anyone who’s slept with their father.

“I see why you would jump to that conclusion, Richard. But you’re part of my pack now so I won’t lie to you to spare your feelings. The decision to seduce you was easily made because you fell into the same category for me as Keith. Excellency stirs me. I knew of your past already at that office party. An orphan kit from the slums teaching himself to read then getting himself into college without an official education only to ace it? Rest assured that I felt attracted to you based on personality alone. I wasn’t as smitten as my brother simply because I didn’t allow myself to be. After I lost my Charles I made the decision to never again get mated.”

“Hah! Fat lot of good that did ya,” Dean exclaims triumphantly with a shit-eating grin. They all laugh, including Marlon. Dick’s sadness fades from his scent.

“No. Decisions made by the mind to control the heart rarely hold up against pressure,” Marlon agrees.

“But, like, real talk,” Dean says getting a troubled frown on his face. “You’ve never smelt someone and felt like, ‘holy fuck, I need to bend this person over and fuck the living shit out of them’?”

“By Ares, yes I have,” Marlon chuckles. “I was already in college by the time that happened. I got one whiff on the O and started to get an erection. It’s a rare happenstance for me so that I now live with three Omegas that I feel sexually attracted to by scent, is quite mind-boggling and wondrous to me. But coming to terms with my atypical lack of libido wasn’t easy. Especially since I presented during a politically turbulent time when things that had been brewing under the surface for years suddenly started to happen at an alarming pace. It would have come out of left field for us if it wasn't for my connections in the slums. Our riches were our blindfold. A false protection that merely meant that those that sought to destroy us would come for us last. And Jedikiah, as much as I love and respect him, was particularly blinded. Luckily I found someone in the pack that shared my views. At the time I thought he'd be my least likely ally. I couldn't have been more wrong.”

"Sean,” Raff hedges.

Marlon hums his agreement. “For all our differences, politically, we stood united..."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marlon is a gray-asexual, or a demi, whatever term you prefer. For him to feel sexual attraction very specific terms need to be met. But just like for us, it doesn't mean he isn't able to do the deed. I've based his experiences off of what ace people have told me and what I've read online about how they experienced things before they heard about asexuality and its spectrum. Naturally, since Marlon is the one telling the story it's biased by how he experiences things. I am not asexual myself and this won't be everyone who is asexual's experience. I've also taken into account that sex is even more of a social device for them than it is for us.


	19. Coming To Terms...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the same time as Marlon's struggling with his lack of libido, his relationships with the highest ranking Alphas in the pack are abysmal. He barely sees Jed these days and he and Sean butt heads constantly when Marlon bothers to come home. Then a few alarming events take place...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long chapter. :) The next one will be published in a few days and is shorter.
> 
>  
> 
> **Warning: Violent scenes. Murder. Children dying.**

* * *

“Why haven’t you been home for days?" Sean demands, striding after Marlon to keep up. They've been arguing for one hour straight ever since Marlon came back to leave the car he'd borrowed to take Laurent for a checkup at the hospital. He’d dropped Aiden and Laurent off at the Sanctuary and he intends to meet them there if he can just get Sean off his back. It’s been ‘Where have you been?’, ‘You’re hurt. Who hurt you?’, ‘What do you mean by working? Doing what for whom?’

“Didn’t feel like it. So I took a page out of our esteemed Patriarch’s playbook,” Marlon snipes.

“That’s hardly the same. He stays in the apartment because it’s more practical while working at HQ. I haven’t seen you at HQ for weeks and you haven’t stayed at the apartment building either.”

“So you’ve got your answer. It’s more practical for me to sleep in the city, just like Jed. And you don’t want me at HQ. Ares forbid I use my brain before college,” Marlon seethes, casting a glare over his shoulder.

“Not true. Where have you been staying?” Sean’s scowling at him, relentless in his cross-examination. Most pack members keep their distance when Sean and Marlon argue but not all of them. Sandra and Frederick will come to watch if they’re close, never interfering, only listening. But now both of them are at the office. Marlon had taken Jed’s advice about Frederick, challenged him with scenarios and asking what he’d do. Frederick frequently challenged him back the same way nowadays, to the point where it became a game. Honestly? Frederick should be outranking Dave by miles, possibly Marlon too (something he’s loath to admit), but Frederick never gave him an actual rank challenge. Possibly it was the same thing as with Myra and Sandra. Both were competent enough to hold the ultimate responsibility but only one of them were comfortable with it. That’s the only reason Marlon can see as to why Frederick’s lower mid-ranking instead of up top. Once, Frederick had come to him and said ‘The south part of the stable is on fire―’ That’s all he got out before Marlon launched into action, rattling orders and hurrying towards the exit. It had taken a full minute to realise it was only one of Frederick’s scenarios. It had taken Frederick another five minutes to stop laughing. 

“At Keith’s place, if you have to know,” Marlon snipes.

That seems to take some ire out of Sean. “Are you going to meet him now?”

“No.”

Sean’s back to scowling, taking the stairs two at a time just like Marlon. “So where are you going?”

“To the Sanctuary to get high.”

“And you just admit that?”

Marlon spins around at the bottom of the stairs, stopping so abruptly Sean bumps into him putting them nose to nose. “I’m a lot of things, Sean, but not a liar. You all want me to stop using my brain, be youthfully carefree and stay out of any hecking pack business. Drugging myself into oblivion is the only way I know to meet those requirements. Now go hump a cactus,” he growls.

“I would but you keep turning me down,” Sean deadpans.

If Marlon wasn’t the target of that pun he would have laughed. Now he flares, teeths his canines and growls a ‘leave me be’. Sean flares and shows his teeth in response―a warning, but a passive one since there’s no growl to go along with it. Marlon spins around and heads for the exit. This time Sean doesn’t follow.

* * *

A few hours of dancing put Marlon in a slightly better mood, but only slightly and the small upper he took has worn off. He’s in pre-Rut which makes him annoyed since he’s anticipating the absolute torture that a Rut is. He’s parked himself on his favourite spot on ‘their’ couch by the end of the long side of the low table. Aiden’s sitting furthest away by the corner, sitting by the short end of the table with an O knotted on his lap and Laurent cooped up beside him in the corner bend of the couch pining as usual. The rest of their friends―the O Buck Cavelli, and the Alphas Marshall Swift, Topper and Jitterbug Jayhawk―are sitting on the couch while temporary acquaintances are forced to use the chairs. Marlon’s got Malicia tucked under his arm to minimize her glaring at Aiden. She’s always guarded Laurent’s attention even after she presented and mated into the Boltons, but tonight she’s unusually quiet and lost in thought. Marlon considers pretending to care and ask why, but he’s too preoccupied with thinking of something that happened earlier today before he drove Laurent to the hospital. Laurent too appears muted. Aiden is mostly his normal self if you don’t count the occasional guarded look he throws Marlon’s way. It’s nothing new. He always does that when Marlon’s brooding.

Laurent tracks his move when Marlon takes a sip of his drink. Marlon’s not sure what this drink is called. He’d told the bartender to surprise him and make it strong. It sure is strong, burning like fire on its way down. He puts the drink back and nuzzles Malicia’s neck. He can catch the residue of blood on her, as well as the scent of low-grade pains like you get from bruises. These are common scents on any slum-dwelling Packrunner in general, but Mal’s been fighting more than usual lately.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be doing that,” Jitterbug tells Marlon, gesturing towards Malicia with his chin. “I’ve heard Knuckles hates you these days.”

“Is that why he’s never around anymore?” Aiden asks, dragging his attention away from the O he’s currently knotting. Knuckles Bolton is Malicia’s mate. He used to be part of their group of friends but as Aiden just pointed out, he’s been absent lately.

Jitterbug shrugs. “I don’t know. We haven’t seen much of the Boltons at all lately except for Mal.”

Marlon strokes some of Malicia’s long hair behind her ear. “Do you mind me snuggling you, Mal?” he asks. Her opinion is the only one he cares about right now.

She snorts. “As far as I’m concerned you can knot me senseless on a stage for hours. If Knuckles has a problem with it he can come here and defend his rights like an adult instead of moping at home with his pack.”

“With _his_ pack?” Aiden says before Marlon can voice the same reaction. Mal’s a Bolton herself now. It’s an odd but pointed phrasing.

Malicia gets a tendril of anxiety in her scent and shifts uncomfortably. “They’re up to something. And they’re keeping me out of it. I don’t know, but it feels like they do it because I come from the Hales and they know my heart’s still with the Hales. I haven’t exactly kept quiet about my loyalty to my birth pack.”

Uneasy looks are traded between everyone on the couch (not counting the O Aiden’s knotting). “That doesn’t sound good at all,” Marshall states with a worried frown. “We’ve had Boltons dropping in on our territory seemingly for no reason at odd hours. They're as friendly as they've ever been when greeted, but it's seemed like they've tried to avoid us.”

“Scouts," Buck states with a deep, worried frown.

"Hey, no need to jump to conclusions," Aiden argues. He looks at Marshall. “You have one market and a popular shopping street on your territory. And crossing it is the fastest way to get from the business district to the bridge on foot. We cross your territory almost daily.”

"Yes, but that's an apparent reason. But at 4 AM, looking at sewer lids in our back alleys?”

"Heck, they _are_ scouting you.”

"But _why_? You're allies.”

"Are you talking about pack war?” Everyone's gazes jump to the O Aiden's knotting as if they'd forgotten she was there until she spoke. She flusters. “I'm sorry. But isn't that something Packrunners do?”

"Not amongst allies, sweetheart,” Aiden says. “We help each other out. That's why we're getting agitated when it seems like an ally is planning to backstab us.”

"But what's the incentive?” Buck asks mostly rhetorically. "We've all had a good relationship with the Boltons since forever.”

"Mal, why would they scout out sewer lids?" Marlon asks.

“Because they use the sewers like we do the roofs,” Malicia answers. "But they keep themselves to their territory even underground as far as I know.”

Marlon makes a mental note to get a map of the sewer system and to brainstorm defences and offences to counter the Boltons. It's not something to do in public though. The public has ears like Aiden's O just proved. “Mal, I think you should leave Knuckles and go back to the Hales,” he says. "At this point, you only have four related Alphas left there and you can always use condoms now that the aversion period is over.”

“I would if they'd take me back but I know it doesn't work like that,” Malicia sighs.

"If we go to war I don't want you caught on the enemy side,” Laurent says. "Come home with me tonight and I'll motivate a sniping.”

Malicia's scent saturates with happiness and she chirps affectionately at Laurent. She never wanted to wander even when the wanderlust set in. And the Hales had taken a heavy loss from the EB50 poisoning. Laurent and Malicia’s bloodline all but eradicated due to a love of swimming and eating fish. Bloodlines aren’t supposed to be important in a pack but for Marlon they always have been so he thinks Mal’s better off staying with her birth pack, risk of inbreeding be damned.

Which makes for a good change of topic. “So, Laurent, why are you so muted today?” Marlon asks.

Laurent huffs and smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “No big deal. Just something the doctor said…” Instantly, he laughs and holds up his hands to thwart Marlon’s sudden alarm. “No, no. Nothing serious. It’s just that…” He looks down at his lap and pulls on a loose thread on his pants. “You know how she said I’d live to get mated and see my kits grow up?”

"She changed that prediction?” The pure dread Marlon feels is plain for all to smell and see.

Aiden chuckles. “Relax, Mar, he's only a bit sad and disappointed. If he got a new death sentence he'd have been a lot more upset.”

"Yes, no, it isn't that,” Laurent agrees. Marlon's more reassured by Aiden's superior sense of smell than Laurent's words. To Marlon, Laurent smells neither sad or disappointed. “I, uh, you know, I never use a condom unless the O specifically requests it. Especially within the pack. We lost so many kits to the poison and…” Laurent sucks in a breath and lets it out with a heavy sigh. “It's possible I was damaged and can't have kits. It's not a huge deal.”

"It is if you're sad about it,” Marlon states.

"Mar. I'd probably be dead already if you hadn't interfered, but I might live long enough to see the end of the century now and I'm grateful for that. So what does it matter if my mate's kits aren't my own? I still get to raise them and shower them with love.”

"You really don't care if it's not your kits?” Marlon asks in bemusement.

“No, why should I?"

Aiden laughs at Marlon's confused question as well as Laurent's confusion as to why he'd even ask. “Mar cares. He wants everything that's his to be _his_. Personally, I don't want kits or even a mate. When I see myself in the future I see myself help Mar raise his brood.”

“Really? You never want to get mated?” the O in Aiden’s lap asks.

Aiden nuzzles her sweetly. “No. I hope you don’t take this personally because you’re a wonderful, sweet O. But I’m afraid that no matter how lenient you are you’re much to Conservative for me. It just wouldn’t work out.”

She chuckles and gives his arm around her midriff a squeeze. “Oh no. I’m waiting for my truemate. I just wanted to be with a red-eyed Alpha while I still can.”

Aiden smirks smugly and Marlon curves his lip in disgust while their friends snigger. He doesn’t know what he hates most - the people that reduce Aiden to nothing more than the colour of his eyes or that Aiden’s smug about it. “You really don’t want to get mated?” Marlon asks sceptically. They haven’t talked about that since both presented.

Aiden shrugs. “She’d have to be one heck of an O to change my mind. I don’t even care what she smells like. I want it to click within seconds of meeting her. She has to be brave, sly, coy, smart, Primal, loyal. I want her to be coquettish like a Conservative but only to hide someone like you underneath - dangerous, fiercely intelligent, ruthless when it comes to getting what she wants but who don’t think twice about sacrificing it all to help a loved one. I want her to be very pack oriented and to adore my family as much as she adores me and I her. Hey, why are you all laughing?”

They’re all sniggering at him now. Topper is the one to answer. “You didn’t exactly put the bar low. Especially if she has to be able to show all those qualities at first meeting.”

“I know. That’s why I’m saying I’ll never get mated,” Aiden grins.

“You want her to be like a Conservative?” Naturally, that’s what Marlon gets stuck on while he lights a cigarette and offers one to Malicia too.

“Yes, but no. I love the poise and grace with which Conservative Os move and speak. Look at our pack, or the Hales. We all move like warriors since that’s what we are, Os and Alphas alike. But imagine a truly powerful O that hides behind a demure and submissive mask so you don’t know how powerful she is unless you happen to anger her.”

“Like Sandra?” Marlon asks, blowing out smoke.

Aiden chuckles. “Mar, you’re mistaking quiet for demure. Sandra’s calm and doesn’t talk more than she has to. But there’s absolutely nothing coquettish about her body language. And she moves with grace, I’ll give you that. But it’s the grace of a stalking cat, not a deer.”

“Whatever,” Buck says. “At least now I know who’ll get to help me during my Heats. Laurent, from now on, your knot is mine.”

Laurent grins. “Just say when. But why?”

“Because I can’t stand the smell of condoms. They make me want to gag. But if you can’t put a bun in the oven, you’re perfect.”

“Bucky,” Marshall says, “you’re a fine, but dumb woman. He didn’t say he couldn’t, he said there’s a risk that he can’t.”

“Don’t care. I’ll take that chance,” Buck answers petulantly.

All of them snigger and Laurent raises his glass to salute Buck. He and Aiden are both equally bad―if there’s a chance to knot an O they’ll take it―with only one difference. Laurent has to work for it, Aiden gets Os throwing themselves at him.

“So, Mar,” Jitterbug says. “Now we know why Mal and Laurent are moping today. What’s your excuse?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Marlon answers with a quick, pointed look at the Conservative on Aiden’s lap.

The O notices it. “It’s fine. I’ll go back to my friends so you can talk in private when his knot goes down,” she offers with a smile, then turns her head so she can look at Aiden. “If it’s okay with you?”

Marlon withholds another sneer of disgust and instead inhales from his cigarette. She’s literally just said that she’s only here to get knotted by a red-eyed Alpha, and still she asks for his permission to leave. She’s a perfectly fine O but Marlon hates her by default for being Conservative. Granted, she’s the tolerable kind - a lenient. Meaning, she believes there’s only one god and that there are truemates plus that Os should submit to Alphas, but she isn’t monogamous, chaste, nor thinks that Os should act like helpless little mice to make Alphas look better.

A scent of acute distress from Aiden puts Marlon on high alert. Aiden tries to stand up, cussing “Jinkies! Turds! Darn!” Realises he’s stuck and sits down again with anxiety rolling through his scent while he stares at something.

Marlon looks in the same direction to see Sean making his way through the throng of people, scenting his way towards them. He’s instantly ticked off, fuelled on by the anxiety of his friends since they’re affected by Aiden’s nerves.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Jitterbug asks, but both Marlon and Aiden ignore him in full focus on Sean approaching. Marlon spreads his legs and slouches a bit where he sits, pinches the cig between his lips to pick up his drink, trying to look at nonchalant (and provocative) as possible. Beside him, Malicia sneezes from the sting of his anger.

“Whoop. I guess that’s my cue,” Aiden’s girl says and stands up. “I’ll be going now.” She hurries away, hoping to be gone before whatever’s making Aiden nervous happens. It’s possible Aiden’s knot was killed by his nerves. Marlon’s pretty certain that if Sean hadn't already spotted them by now, Aiden would have dived for cover and tried to get out unnoticed. Instead, he tucks his penis in and tries to look like he isn't drunk and high. To this day no high ranking pack member has ever caught him doing drugs to spoil his spotless reputation.

Sean reaches their table.

“Hello, Sir. What are you doing here? I, uh, I'm just here to look after Mar,” Aiden flusters awkwardly. Cowardly, if Marlon has a say about it.

"If your intention is to drag us back home you've come in vain,” Marlon states.

Sean's gaze travels across the seated group―you can practically see the cogwheels tick inside his brain―and returns to Marlon. He gives Marlon a small smile that looks tight at the edges. “Not at all. It struck me that it was long since I took any time off. And I haven't been out and about in town since my college days. So I figured I'd come to join you.”

"Fair,” Marlon says challengingly. "What's your poison? Alcohol? Uppers? Downers? All of it?”

Sean briefly looks at the group of friends again before looking back at Marlon. “I'll stick with alcohol for now," he answers diplomatically.

Marlon reaches out with a leg, hooks his foot around a chair and tugs it closer to him so it's placed by the short end of the table diagonally to him. He nods at it to indicate that Sean can sit then directs his gaze pointedly at Aiden. Aiden flares, stands up, whistles shrilly to get a server's attention and sits down. “Alcohol coming up, Sir."

“Everybody, this is Sean," Marlon says to his friends. "He's second Alpha in command in our pack." He looks at Sean. “This is Buck of the Cavellis,” he introduces while pointing. "Topper and Jitterbug of the Jayhawks. Marshall of the Swifts. And Malicia and Laurent of the Hales.”

“Technically I’m still a Bolton,” Mal points out with a dissatisfied twist to her lips.

“No,” Marlon refutes decisively, looking at her. “We’ve decided that you’ll be sniped back and I’m not letting you return. If needed I’ll tie you up and let Laurent do what he has to eradicate any Bolton bonds.”

Malicia purrs and rubs herself affectionately against him.

Marlon looks back at Sean who’s observing them carefully. “Laurent is my best friend.”

“Your penpal?”

“That’s right.”

Sean reaches over the table to shake Laurent’s hand. Laurent stands up and takes the offered hand. “A pleasure to finally meet you,” Sean says as they both retrieve their hands to smell their palms as you do if something (in this case the table) stops you from greeting someone properly. Sean goes on to shake hands and sniff his palm with the rest too. “Swifts of the market district?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Cavellis. You’re located by Darion’s Square?”

“Right you are, Sir.”

“Jitterbug and Topper. Those are not given names by my guess?”

“No, Sir. But I’ll take my given name with me to the grave,” Topper answers.

“His name is Bert,” Jitterbug divulges, causing laughter at Topper’s utterly betrayed expression.

Sean smiles charmingly. “Topper it is,” he says and winks before turning his attention to Malicia. “I can smell that you and Laurent are related. It’s rare to snipe back an O who has wandered. May I ask what that is about?”

Marlon answers. “Mal mated into the Boltons but they’ve been cutting her out while they’re up to something. The Jayhawks haven’t seen a Bolton for ages while the Swifts have had them scouting Swift territory. Plus our possibly former friend Knuckles Bolton no longer comes here. It reeks of an upcoming backstabbing since we’re all allies.”

Sean sits down with a troubled frown. “The Boltons have been acting up where our businesses overlap too. We’ll talk more about that when we get home.”

The server comes to take their order, cutting off the conversation. When Marlon’s about to order for himself Laurent chirps briefly in distress and leans forward to put a hand over Marlon’s drink. He lifts his eyebrows pleadingly with a little ‘ _tchp,tchp_ ’ and procures an upper and a downer that he offers Marlon. “On second thought, I’ll just have a lemonade,” Marlon tells the server before downing the upper with the last of his drink. 

“ _Brrr?_ ” Sean asks with one eyebrow arched in question. 

Marlon puts his cigarette out in an ashtray and then fishes out his pack to take another one. He pointedly offers one to Sean, testing him. He’s never seen Sean smoke. Sean hesitates for a heartbeat before he takes it and lets Marlon light it for him. Marlon smirks when Sean coughs a little on first inhale, then he gestures for Sean to lean close, content to see Sean removing that rod up his butthole. “I’m in a foul mood. If I get too drunk while angry,” he confesses quietly, taking a deep breath for courage before he goes on, “I’ve sometimes been unable to discern friend from foe. I’ve blitzed with no memory of what I’ve done. I’m hardly a good protector if my friends need to fear me so I trust Laurent when he tells me I’ve had enough. Drugs don’t have the same effect on me, so…” He shrugs a shoulder. Sean purses his lips thoughtfully in response.

“Excuse me, Sir…” Marshall begins, addressing Sean.

Marlon scowls and jerks back. “His name is Sean. Since he says he’s here taking time off, that’s how you’ll address him,” he says to Marshall, then turns to frown at his brother. “And, Aiden, _relax_. If he says he isn’t here to punish us, he isn’t. And we both know who’d get to bear the brunt of any punishment if that’s what he’d intended.”

Marshall blinks at Marlon, then looks uncertainly at Sean. Back in the days, Marlon had gotten fed up with hearing Laurent referred to as Hopper and decreed that the nickname was out of bounds. Laurent was fine with either so these days they didn’t use a nickname for him. Laurent is a beautiful name and should be used. Period.

Sean chuckles. “Sean’s fine. What do you want?” Sean assures, making everyone relax. Although, Aiden takes a bit longer to follow suit.

* * *

A while later Jitterbug reaches out to poke Marlon. “Hey. So we know why Laurent and Mal were down. What put you in a nasty mood?”

“I bet it was the Conservatives,” Topper sniggers.

“You’re darn right it was,” Marlon agrees. “Earlier today I passed City Hall. There was a woman sitting on the stairs bawling her eyes out accompanied by two kits and a Juvie who all smelled of fear and despair,” he starts to explain.

“I bet you couldn’t keep your nose out of business that wasn’t yours as usual,” Aiden sniggers.

“Wrong. It _was_ my business because I decided it was,” Marlon refutes, making his companions laugh. “So I asked the lady what had happened and she showed me this paper.” He digs a folded paper out of his pocket. He often misses his flamboyant skirts but the pockets in Michael’s military pants are deep and can hold everything he needs on a daily basis including a bar of candy, a bracelet or necklace, and a miniature jar of honey that he uses to gift Os if he can’t simply buy them food, drinks, or give them drugs to get their attention. Sean takes the paper from him, eyes through it and turns it over to Aiden. Laurent leans over Aiden’s shoulder to read. The rest of them are illiterate.

“What is it?” Buck asks.

“It’s a form you need to fill in to get your house back if the government seized it thinking the owner was dead,” Marlon explains. “What had happened was that she and her family had to flee when the war got to close to home. Just she and her kit since her mate was killed on the front. But the Unionites have been pushed back so they came back home two months later to find a notification of seizure of property nailed to their cottage door. Now, she couldn’t read so she went to the village city hall to ask about it. They told her that the government had claimed the property thinking the owners were dead, and that it would be given to someone in need of re-housing, or, and this is a darn hecking important part, _sold_ , if it hadn’t been claimed within a limited time.”

Sean and Aiden both stir, starting to smell upset. Jitterbug looks at them with a troubled frown. “I get that this is supposed to make me angry. But would you explain why?”

Sean answers. “Because they’ve said that they take houses with no owner to give to people who’ve lost their homes. If it’s true that they now sell them unless the specific property is claimed it means that they’re stealing property to make a profit. Two months is not that long for a home to be empty. Fuck, but there are people who leave their homes to spend the summers in the country, staying away longer than that. Imagine coming back to find your home has been seized and possibly sold to someone else.”

That stirs the others too. “That’s awful!”

“I’d rip their throats out.”

“Hah! They would just dare try to take our homes!”

Marlon gestures to get them to quiet down. “No, they wouldn’t. Not yet. Mainly because if a Packrunner, literate or not, comes home to find intruders we would murder to take our home back and we don’t care about any fancy titles of any people who come to knock on our doors. But this woman? She’s a Prog. Progs are generally law-abiding citizens. So she was told that she had to go to the nearest city to fill in a request to get her house back. So she did. But _they_ told her she needed to come here to apply for her house back. And she did, crossing three states with her kits. Here she got help to fill in the form by the woman behind the counter who gave the form to someone in a room in the back and told her to wait. Which she did. For hours. Then she got her form back with a big red ‘denied’. That’s why she was crying. She didn’t know what to do. I told her I’d help her. It took me about five minutes to walk out of City Hall with an ownership deed for her. Guess how?” Marlon’s seething thinking about it. His friends exchange uncertain glances. He hasn’t given them enough to guess by he realises. “I filled in the form with her details exactly as she’d given them except one little thing. One thing that shouldn’t even _be_ on a government form because it’s not their gods’ be damned business,” he growls and stands up to take the form from Aiden. He holds it up so everyone can see. “Look here. These four squares in the corner. The text beside them says, Progressive, Packrunner, Primal, and Conservative respectively. You have to put a cross in the square of your designation.”

“You put Conservative,” Aiden states, having listened to most of Marlon’s conspiracy theories.

Marlon snaps his fingers and points at him. “Exactly. She, as an honest, law-abiding widow of a soldier, had, as you can see, put Prog.” He taps the cross on the form hard. “I walked in an hour after she’d been denied, left the form to the woman behind the counter. She took one look at it and stamped it with ‘OK’, then went and got me the deed with a polite smile. The only difference between the forms was that Ares be damned cross.”

He sits down trying to calm down. With the upper at work he gets hyperfocused by whatever occupies his mind at the moment so he has to calm down or he’ll do something stupid like setting City Hall on fire. Malicia lights one of her own cigarettes and hands it to him. He’s grateful even if it barely helps when he gets like this.

“Okay, so… that’s, that’s not good. But maybe they’re just trying to make sure no Unionites move in. They’re Progs too, after all,” Buck suggests hesitantly.

“Oh no. Don’t even go there. Nobody hates Unionites more than our Progs because they stand for very different values. Heck, this is the kind of tales we hear happening in the Union. It should not be happening here in America,” Marlon says and gestures with his cigarette wielding hand at Buck.

“You really think a widow to a soldier deserves to get her home stolen?” Sean asks Buck. His voice and expression are level and friendly despite a small spike of anger in his scent.

“No. I’m just trying to figure out why they’d do that.”

“Tale as old as time. Power. Money,” Sean answers. “It’s no mystery.”

“If they’re already going for the Progs, how long before they start trying to weed us out?” Marlon asks rhetorically. That causes another round of bluster amongst the group, certain they can withstand any government shenanigans. Sean remains troubled and thoughtful. A moment later he puts a hand on Marlon’s thigh and fumbles for Marlon’s hand. The impromptu hand-holding proves enough of a distraction. Not long after that Marlon pulls Sean to the couch, forcing Malicia to sit on Marshall’s lap to fit. All so Marlon can cuddle Sean to his heart’s content. Sean’s the best cuddler. He cuddles like it’s the main attraction as you should. Both of them purr content all-is-well, relaxing everyone nearby.

* * *

They’re walking home in the dusky pre-dawn. It’s the hour when the early birds haven’t stirred yet and the night owls have gone to bed. Both Aiden and Sean are drunk but not overly so. All three of them are a bit rambunctious and playful, shoving each other, joking and tussling as they move along. They’re in the very outskirts of the Hale territory, getting closer to the bridge. Marlon jumps up on Sean’s back since Aiden knows him well enough to anticipate and evade piggyback rides. Sean staggers under his weight. “Fuck, you’re heavy. Get off me,” he laughs.

“I’m heavy? You mean, you’re weak,” Marlon teases and tightens his grip around Sean’s shoulders.

“Oh, I’m weak, am I? You’re the one who can’t even walk by yourself.”

“That’s right. Now carry me home,” Marlon purrs.

Aiden laughs at them.

That’s when Marlon hears it. A Hale pack distress call in the distance. He instantly lets go, drops down and takes off running.

“Hey, where are you―” 

Marlon’s not listening. He shimmies up a drainpipe to run over the roofs. It’s faster if you know your way. Marlon has played and worked with Laurent so much lately that he knows the Hale territory almost as well as an actual Hale. He runs arrow-straight for the call, makes controlled slides and giant leaps between the rooftops to get there faster, dropping fangs and claws as he goes. The call comes from the least frequently patrolled area, a dead end street housing a pack and a couple of elderly Primals. It’s not that far and as he comes closer he can hear a commotion. He reaches the edge of the roof to see what’s going on. Two people are down, two more fighting for their lives vastly outnumbered with any escape routes cut off. He knows them in passing - Chaz and Keg. A quick count reveals eleven adult attackers and three kits, all of them armed with something - knives, mallets, bats, sharpened iron rods. One kit is flinging stones. The only reason the two cornered Hales are still standing is that they’ve got their backs to a wall and it’s physically impossible for their attackers to get at them all at once. But it’s a matter of time. With the stones being thrown and the long, sharp rods they are doomed.

Marlon feels a strong presence crouch down beside him.

_Take out the missiles first._

_Next go for the big guy with the spear. If you can disarm him give the spear to Chaz._

_After that you'll be fighting for your life._

Luci's voice is clear in his head. He sees her, hard and translucent, pointing, short hair flapping in a strong wind. There's barely any wind here so it must be coming from beyond the veil.

There are people that claim that once you're dead, you're dead. That any ghost encounters are caused by your own mind playing tricks on you. That you project your memories and experiences onto an idea that brings you comfort or fear, depending on the context. It's one of the most blasphemous ideas Marlon can think of. To him, there's no doubt Luci’s crossed the barrier to support him now. The dead can’t fight for the living, but there’s nothing to stop them from giving this sort of aid. He nods curtly to affirm that he’s heard her, then runs crouched down to the nearest reinforced drainpipe. The kit flinging stones can’t be more than six or seven. She’s constantly moving in the back to throw hard and with great accuracy between the adults to hit the Hales. The stones in themselves aren't bigger than they can fit in a palm, but every time they hit they cause pain, and distraction that could be fatal. That’s not taking into account if she’d manage to hit the face.

Marlon slides down the pipe when she’s moving his way. Two thirds down he pushes off and jumps.

He lands on her. It’s not a perfect landing but she goes down, collarbones and ribs breaking under the force and weight, head hitting the cobbled street with a loud crack. Marlon goes into a roll in between enemy legs and up to stand just behind the man Luci pointed out for him. He reaches out with a clawed hand to curve around the man’s throat, digs his claws in and tears it open, grabbing the sharpened metal rod with his other hand, yanking. The man goes down as Marlon with one smooth move flips the rod over to hold it out to Chaz. Chaz, who’d bragged over how good he was at handling spears one of the few times Marlon’s talked to him. For an eternally long half a heartbeat their gazes meet, then Chaz grabs it and Marlon feels a grazing blow by his kidneys. He spins around to defend himself now the enemies are aware of him.

It’s chaos.

Marlon’s heart works overtime, his muscles ache, sweat pours, he takes hits and cuts from all directions. Someone goes down in front of him as the sharpened metal rod he’d given Chaz comes jabbing under his armpit. He kicks, claws, bites, tears whoever he can reach. Manages to pull a baseball bat out of someone’s hand giving him a better range. He’s aware that he’s making a sound because his breastbone is vibrating, but he doesn’t know what sound it is except it’s unnerving the foes that come face to face with him.

Aiden roars in anger somewhere behind the throng pressing in on Marlon. He can’t see his brother but two familiar golden orbs appear behind the back of an enemy to Marlon's right. Sean delivers several quick underhanded stabs in the soft region of the back then ducks under a blow and spins to skewer someone else in the belly. He kills coldly, silently, and effectively.

Marlon’s muscles feel like jelly. Everything’s moving fast and lasting forever. He can’t tell how long he’s been fighting. There are more Hales there now. Marlon spots Aiden fighting and a kit creeping towards his back with a long knife. Marlon dodges a blow, takes two giant leaps towards the kit and swings his bat full force to the head. Aiden turns around in time to see the hit send the kit flying. Aiden's eyes widen with shock, red luminosity dimming. But Marlon hasn't got time to explain himself to his soft-hearted brother since there's a Hale needing help to his left.

It's over soon thereafter.

There's a strange, urgent moment when everyone looks around for the next person to fight followed by a confused moment of realisation that any foes are already dead or dying. The street smells of fear, blood, sweat, urine and feces. For a few seconds the only sound aside from strained breaths and a few whimpers of suffering is the sound Marlon's making―has been making during the whole fight―a purr of all-is-well. 

“By Mercury, Mar! Now I get why some call you Ares," Keg exclaims. "If I hadn't known you were on our side I would have shat myself when you started purring.” He laughs uncomfortably.

“I didn't even think of it. You guys alright?" Marlon asks and walks towards them, stepping over bodies.

"No,” Chaz answers. He's white as a sheet, trembling, hurt and bleeding from several places. 

Marlon comes close enough to hook a hand behind his neck and pull him close, pressing Chaz’ ear against his chest and changing his purr to a soothing sound. He swipes some secretion from Chaz’ neck with his other hand and siphons twice to check the seriousness of any injuries. They're serious but it's the shock that's the real danger. Marlon takes his miniature jar of honey from his pocket, opens it and swipes some onto his finger. “Here. Suck it off. It'll do some good." Arvid taught him that. That Chaz lets himself be handled like this is a testament to the state he's in. Marlon takes a swipe of honey for himself and passes the jar over to Keg. “You both did well. You're as good with a spear as you boasted, Chaz. You might have saved my life.” He pets Chaz’ head as the older man goes to his knees and wraps his arms around him, ear pressed to his chest in desperate need of consolation. “Could you tell me what happened?"

“I don't know. Kip came running to us smelling of fear and distress. She yelled at us that she needed help,” Chaz says with a shaky voice.

"Kip?”

Keg points at the body of the first kit Marlon killed, the girl that had been throwing stones. Others are gathering round to listen now too.

“Go on."

“We ran after her intent to help. She lead us here and suddenly spun around throwing a rock. It took me right on the brow. We didn't even see it coming. Twerp and Knickers got killed before we realized we were being attacked. They had us surrounded but Keg and I managed to get the wall behind us. We were dead. I was sure of it. All we could do was dodge and parry. Then you came.”

"Why did they attack you?”

“I _don’t knoooow_ ,” Chaz wails heartbrokenly. “Their kits played with our kits. They were allies. Friends even. I don’t understand!” That, more than anything, is why he's so shaken, Marlon thinks. Chaz is no stranger to violence. 

“They’re, _were_ , craftsmen. They did pottery, weaving, cobbling, leatherwork and carpentry. We let them stay here, offered them protection so they could move around our territory without fear of getting robbed or burgled. They paid a tenth of what they produced but could choose if they wanted to pay with money from their earnings or in wares. Mostly they paid with wares. Every tenth item made. If a month were particularly rough on them we didn’t collect or collected less,” Keg fills in. A tenth is not much, all things considered.

“So they were poor?” Sean asks and steps into the ring of people. He gets several nods in response. “In that case, I might shed some light on why, even if it raises more questions.” He holds up a knife on display. “This is my dagger. It’s a brand called Kazilou. It cost me 4000 dollars to buy 10 years ago. The brand was established only 13 years ago by the Kazilou sisters and cater only to the very rich.” He lifts his other hand to hold up two very similar knives. “These are also Kazilou knives. This model was made two years ago.” He sheaths his knife by his belt and shows two Hales beside him what probably is a stamp on the decorated hilts before handing the knives over. “I took those of the corpses of the foes. Together those two knives are worth about ten grand. They’re too new to be pack heirlooms, so somebody must have given them to the pack recently. Possibly in payment for an attack. But who? And why?”

“Boltons?” Aiden asks.

“Are the Boltons rich enough to throw away something worth ten times the yearly salary of an office worker?” Sean asks.

“No. They’re not,” Marlon states. “Not unless they too are suddenly funded by someone else. Even then I doubt they’d just let two knives like that go to waste. They’d be sticking around to retrieve the knives.”

Sean nods an agreement.

“What I don’t get,” another Hale, Moxie, says, “is how they dared to attack us? Like Keg and Chaz said, they were friendly with us. They knew that as a pack we outnumber them 20 to 1. They’re Packrunners so they knew we’d call for help the moment we were attacked.”

“Unless they themselves were expecting reinforcement,” Sean offers. “The Unionites often hire mercenary companies. They pay them for a couple of months, stop paying and send the companies on missions where they’re expecting to get backups from regulars. Some of these companies are hellspawn who go ‘Backup? That’s cute,’ and do their own thing. But most end up getting slaughtered to a man by us, saving the Union from paying them.”

“You think it was the Union?” Moxie asks.

“Oh. No. Not at all. I can’t see what they stand to gain from it. But I suspect someone might have used their method,” Sean answers. “The Union might hate us, but with this pack and the Boltons suddenly acting up, it’s doing nothing to change the outcome of the war. You’re far from any military power. There’s no incentive. So the question is who’d stand to gain from causing rifts between the packs in New York?”

“Conservatives,” Marlon deadpans.

Aiden sniggers but Sean nods gravely. “You might be right about that. There are many rich Conservative families that would stand to gain if Packrunners lost control of these areas. I think now more than ever, we need to remember that we are one. We don’t want another Napa County Ellis and Montgomery to happen.”

Marlon sucks in a breath and stares at Sean in wonder with a strange flutter in his belly not unlike what he felt when he first scented Nceba, albeit for a completely different reason. Ellis and Montgomery, the two packs that chose money before other packs and therefore died within decades after having eradicated the Packrunning culture of Napa County. Marlon’s been loudly outspoken about how they’re heading for a repeat of history since he was a kit. But Sean was never around to hear him rant about it.

“What’s Napa County Ellis and Montgomery?” someone asks.

“I’ll explain later,” Marlon says. “For now, send a runner to your Main. Tell her what happened and that the Williams pack requests a meeting within two days to solidify our alliance and discuss today’s events.” Maybe he shouldn’t be making decisions like that but Sean’s here to refute him if he disagrees.

Sean points at one of the latest Hales to arrive. One of those who hadn’t been in time to fight. “You. If you don’t have any cars, get us a horse and wagon pronto. We need to get to the hospital and some of the fighters here aren’t in shape to walk that distance. And if you have a healer around, wake them up to join us on the wagon.”

“We can’t afford going to the hospital,” Moxie points out.

“No man or woman fights beside me only to bleed to death once the dust has settled, while I seek medical attention. We’ll pay. Just get us a transport.” Sean turns around and swiftly doles out other orders that are followed despite him not being a Hale.

Marlon looks at Sean with a glow of warmth in his belly, replaying what he’d seen of Sean during the battle. He made killing look easy, silent, focused, moving between foes as if he anticipated their moves. The silence in stark contrast to Aiden’s fearsome roars and growls. Aiden’s also an effective fighter. There’s a huge difference between them, though. Sean’s every move was aimed to kill. Aiden’s to render his foe harmless. It might seem like the same thing but isn’t. An incapacitated foe might stir back to life. Sean had no such mercy. Marlon respects that. He respects even more that Sean instantly adopted the Hales he’d fought beside to stand under his protection and care.

* * *

Riding on a wagon over cobbled streets isn’t very comfortable when you’re wounded. During and right after the fight Marlon hadn’t felt his injuries. Now he’s feeling both bone-deep exhaustion and pain. He’s sitting between Aiden and Sean and he can smell they too suffer like him. It’s worse for poor Chaz laid out on blankets in front of them, cared for by a healer. Keg sits on the other side, holds Chaz’ hand and purrs soothingly at him. The other Hales ride on the wagon behind them.

“We hadn’t made it if Mar hadn’t shown up when he did. I thank Mercury you were so close. We didn’t see him at first, we just noticed the stones stopped coming. Then Gammon’s throat suddenly was ripped open and there Mar was, handing Chaz a spear like an angel of death,” Keg tells Sean. “Purring that darn all-is-well like he was knitting by the fireplace at home or something.” Keg shakes his head. “Smelled it too. Like everything was in order and he was just there to have some fun. Something dark in his eyes. I get it now. Why you honour gods of war. I used to think it was ridiculous. Business folks keeping gods of war. But I get it.” He’s rambling on, trying to keep calm, worried for his friend. Chaz is no longer conscious but the healer has stopped the bleeding and doing her best to make Chaz hold on.

“We’re warriors first and foremost. The business side was born to finance our military operations way back at the beginning of our history,” Sean says. “These days we aspire to master both and the power we gain through our business is often used to avert conflict before it happens.”

Keg nods tiredly and strokes Chaz over the hair. “I’m glad you came, is all I’m saying. At this time of the night, we have few patrols and most are centered on the opposite side of our territory that has the most general activity. No use guarding places where everyone’s asleep. Our pack wouldn’t have made it to us in time. So thank you.”

Sean reaches over Chaz to give Keg a brief pat on the knee then turns to Marlon and Aiden. “Was this the first time you’ve been in a fight like this?” he asks them.

“Define ‘like this’,” Marlon answers.

“Vastly outnumbered with enemies determined to fight to the death.”

Both of them nod. “Three to one is the most I’ve been up against and never before faced off with anyone who won’t be intimidated,” Marlon says.

“Mostly, people will back off as soon as they realise they’ll risk getting injured,” Aiden agrees.

“Sometimes all it takes is for Aiden to flare,” Marlon adds. “People won’t risk going up against a red-eye.”

Sean chuckles. “I’m fairly certain his height, muscle-mass, scent of prosperity and quick fang-drop have something to do with it too.”

Marlon shrugs. Of course that you’d think twice before testing your luck going up against almost 220 pounds of muscles proportional to height.

“You did very well, both of you. I might have missed your first minutes but the fact that you were still standing when we arrived tells a story all by itself, Mar. I’d feel confident with you at my back in any battle. Both of you.”

Marlon gets that little flutter in his belly again, glow of pride in his chest.

“Thank you, Sir,” Aiden says.

“How are you holding up now, Aiden? I get calm from Mar but you smell very anxious,” Sean asks.

Aiden side-eyes Marlon. “It’s just that…” He quiets down, seeming unsure how to go on.

“It’s the kit,” Marlon hedges and digs up his pack of cigs. He taps one out and offers Aiden first, then Sean, Keg, and the healer. Only Aiden and Keg take one. He’s almost out of cigs. He’s going to have to get a new pack as well as a new miniature jar of honey since it had been passed around the fighters in order of who’d fought the longest until it got empty.

After the cigarettes have all been lit Aiden takes a deep breath of smoke and blows it out harshly downward. “You hit that boy’s head like you were hitting a homerun. You sent him flying and turned away to keep fighting before he’d even hit the ground. You _love_ kits. I just… I keep seeing it. That little boy’s head exploding like a darn watermelon. _Jinkies._ You killed a kit, Mar.”

“Nope,” Marlon answers, leaning his head back to blow out smoke upward. “I killed two. The first one was flinging rocks at Keg and Chaz and was the first enemy I took out. You just saw me taking out one. And the moment they took up weapons to join the fight they were no longer kits, they were enemies. The kit you saw me kill was coming at you with a knife, intent on stabbing you in the back.”

“But―”

“No. Stop,” Marlon interrupts Aiden and looks him square in the eyes. “I killed my first man when I was the same age as that kit. I faced off with two adult men and killed one, taking out the eye of the other. If I could do that, so could he. I’m not risking sentimentality based on age. If he’d been cheeping, it would have been another matter. I’d have done what stood in my power to protect him and he’d been adopted either by us or the Hales after his pack was killed, as is right. But he wasn’t cheeping. None of the three kits was, they were all fighting beside the adults, slinking around using their small size to their advantage.”

“Three?” Aiden asks.

“I disposed of the third,” Sean says. “And Mar is right. Kits can be just as dangerous as adults, especially when you threaten them on their home territory. The best sniper I’ve ever met was nine. _Nine_. Not even a Juvie yet and already had more than a hundred confirmed kills. The Union doesn’t adopt kits. They either send them to work camps or kill them outright, cheeping or not.” Amongst Packrunners it was one of those rules that everyone abided to. Just like you always kept a promise, if one pack killed all the adults in another pack you adopted the kits and non-fighting Juvies. Going passive while emitting a cheeping sound is mostly an instinctual reaction amongst kits. (Just like Marlon had done when he’d slept between Jed and Sean.) It’s a rather brutal practice, if you look at it one way, forcing a pack bond between the ones that murdered the parents, and the kits. One would think the kits would grow up hating their adopters, wanting vengeance. But no. Once again scent bonds overrode and dictated emotion. Marlon thinks Keith would be horrified if he knew. This is just another thing on a long list of things Progs object and stunt themselves to avoid. Cruel or not it gave the kits a chance at life they wouldn’t have otherwise. Compare that to lions who slaughtered the cubs and took over the females and the Packrunning way is no longer that cruel.

“It’s just… I’m having a hard time reconciling the image of Mar murdering a kit with the Mar I know that loves kits and shows them endless patience no matter what mood he’s in. He does that even with kits who belong to other packs.” Aiden shakes his head with a troubled frown and sucks on his cigarette.

Marlon places a hand on Aiden’s thigh. “Aide,” he says softly. “Every beat of my heart spells out your name. I know no limits. That doesn’t mean I like everything I do. But to keep you safe there’s nothing I won’t do. Nothing. You’re every breath I take.”

Aiden closes his eyes and leans in to rub his temple affectionately against Marlon’s cheek. “I love you like life, Mar. Always.”

Sean chuckles. “You two are giving me strong Mike and Luci vibes right now.”

That perks Marlon right up. “She was there! Luci. She came and gave me a couple of pointers just before I dived into the fray. It was windy where she is.”

Both Sean and Aiden make cooing sounds of delight hearing one of their fallen had come to show support.

* * *

He’s grateful his Rut hadn’t hit yesterday. Sean had surprised Marlon and Aiden by requesting they be present at the meeting with the Hales. They hadn’t even been barred from speaking. Three hours into the meeting runners had been sent to request the presence of representants from the Swifts and Jayhawks too. They now had a much closer alliance with all three packs, the Hales in particular, and a defensive plan worked out should the Boltons make a move against either of them.

That was yesterday.

During the night his Rut hit, and with it - hell.

He envies Aiden. Aiden’s one of those lucky bastards who barely get affected. A tad bit more aggressive and sweaty and that’s it.

Marlon would pay a fortune and a half if there was a way to get rid of Ruts. (And Heats.)

Now he’s in bed, growling under his breath, sweating buckets, skin itching and burning like fire ants nested underneath, groin aching and an unquenchable _need_ clawing at his insides. He’s dropped full fangs since that strangely gives a little bit of relief. Unlike Aiden, his own aggression levels shoot skywards during his Ruts. The problem with the need is that while masturbating temporarily diminishes it, only an actual knotting levels it out, and while his body might be craving it his brain still rebels against unnecessary penis poking. Keith would be fine, but he prefers not to be knotted at all. Sandra would do, but she has a job to care for. (If she’d even allow him to knot her. He’s not sure because he hasn’t tried.) Aiden and Laurent pass his mental barrier too but Aiden is off doing who knows what and Laurent isn’t available. 

He whines and rolls into a new position for the millionth time, trying to get away from a discomfort that’s mostly internal. He grabs his penis to stroke it to an erection again. He hates this with a passion. He _can_ keep a fairly straight face when he’s out and about. He can. But it’s hard. So he prefers to keep away from people as much as possible and suffer by himself.

There’s a soft knock on his door. He rolls onto his side and watches the door swing open and Sean stop in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe to look at him uncertainly.

“ _What?!_ ” Marlon growls irritably.

Sean gives a false start, sucks in a breath, bites his lip, then hesitantly says, “So… I don’t know if this is relevant information for you… but… I’m a bottom?”

Marlon blinks, brain screeching to a halt for several seconds while he tries the idea on in his head. Then he throws the blanket off himself and pats the mattress demandingly.

* * *

The first time had been rushed and rather brutal. Sean had surprised Marlon by already being prepped and lubricated. Resourceful, Marlon said. Hopeful, Sean countered with a chuckle.

They're on their third go now and all the urgency has gone out of Marlon. He's no longer burning up inside. He isn't overheating and the stinging fire ants under his skin have turned into pleasantly buzzing bumblebees. He's holding himself up on straight arms over Sean, one of Sean's leg over his shoulder, the other hooked around his hip while he’s moving his hip in a slow roll. His belly flutters every time his knot pulls on the rim and Sean lets out a breathy little gasp of pleasure. Sean's hair―darker than Marlon's own―sticks sweatslick to his forehead. He looks up at Marlon with the softest, warmest little smile. Their purrs have synched.

Sean shifts to support himself on an elbow. He reaches up to cup Marlon's neck and pull him down for a kiss. When he opens his mouth to taste Marlon's tongue Marlon's heart misses a beat. “You kiss like a Prog," Marlon states when the kiss ends.

Sean smiles wider with hooded eyes. "I don't. I really don't." 

The implication of that sets off a new kind of fireworks in Marlon. He bends down to kiss Sean again, and again, and again, waiting for that invasive feeling he gets with Keith to kick in. It never does. He ponders around that. Progs kiss solely for the pleasure of it. All other designations for the deep intimacy. He thinks that this can only mean what he's refused to acknowledge before - he loves Sean. It should not be such a big revelation as it is. He's been obsessing over the man since he got here.

_So this is what it's like to make love?_

Who else has he been with that he loves? He's been with Aiden two times. Rushed and feral. Aiden isn't overly keen on bottoming, but he is a horndog. Somehow, Aiden seems to think everyone wants to have sex as often as he does, so he’s let Marlon do it too him. Honestly? Marlon initiated it more to get to cuddle him afterwards. Laurent, he's been with many times by now but it's always been playful in strange environments. Something of a power rush. He loves Laurent but he wouldn't call it making love. Keith? He doesn't love him yet. They're getting there but there will always be a designation divide between them. Keith will never convert. Marlon has asked. If Keith would convert Marlon would mate him. But no. Keith truly believes that the Progressive way is the way to go.

So this? Slowly taking time to explore each other, kissing, stopping to drink each other in by sight and smell while miniature fireworks go off inside like soda pop bubbles braking the surface? It's all new.

Sean is beautiful. So many exquisite scars all over, telling the tale of a life well lived and fights won. They look and smell alike. Sean looks more like Marlon than Aiden does. 

“Would you mind if I pelted? I love the feeling of being petted and fingers scraping through my fur,” Sean asks.

"Of course I don't mind. Why would I mind?"

Sean chuckles. “A lot of people do. There seems to be a general consensus that we're only human when we're bare. Even those who think otherwise may be put off by shifting during sex.”

"Baffling,” Marlon states and Sean’s lips quirk upward. The next moment he sucks in a breath as Sean pelts. He runs his fingers over the soft fur in wonder. “You're gorgeous." 

“You think so?”

Marlon pelts to show Sean why he thinks so.

Sean’s eyes widen and he bursts out laughing. “And you're _vain_. Fuck, it's like looking into a mirror.”

Marlon grins. Sean and he could be twins when fully pelted. Fully pelted your hair grows coarser and takes on the colour and texture of your pelt. A lesser nose can’t tell him and Sean apart by scent. They’re almost the same height. Perhaps Sean’s facial markings are a little more pronounced, but not much. They’ve got different body types. Marlon’s frame is more compact and Sean is lean. But Sean’s so muscular and Marlon still has the youthful slimness so unless you have them side by side for comparison you probably couldn’t see it. They’re two mountain lions with icy blue eyes when they don’t flare. “I'm vain because I have cause to be,” Marlon says with a cocky smirk. Sean laughs again and Marlon silences him with a kiss.

* * *

They lie snuggled together in the stillness between rounds, naked again to let the sweat help cool them down. “Right now it's really hard to believe you hate me," Sean mumbles, drowsy and content.

"Hate you? I don't hate you. What the heck gave you that idea?”

Sean lifts his head to give him an amused and sceptical look. “ _You_ , for starters. You can hardly see me without getting angry. So forgive me for jumping to conclusions.”

"Pfft. If I hated you I wouldn't waste any energy on getting angry.”

"So what's the problem?" Sean asks with an expression of open curiosity.

“The fact that you have to ask despite me having told you a million times, for starters,” Marlon says half-jokingly.

Sean turns thoughtful. “You… don't think we give you enough responsibility? You are understimulated, mentally, and that's why you wreck things?”

That’s an unfair accusation. "When did I last wreck anything?”

"No. You're right. That's based on the stories I've heard about you,” Sean admits. "You don't have to wreck anything anymore. Instead, you've sought out another pack that gives you an out for all your negative emotions as well as your drive to act. On that note, I owe you an apology for an assumption about you.”

"Only one?" Marlon quips dryly.

Sean purses his lips ignoring the joke. “We were told that it was the same for you kits as it was for us. Every inborn Williams ends up going to war at one point or another. There are few exceptions to this rule. And once you've seen war there's no going back. It changes you. That's why we are so keen on letting our kits be carefree kits and our newly presented get the college experience _before_ they get to set foot on the battlefield. When you're done with college you're still young. You learn fast and at college you've most likely run the Omega Run countless of times. Training to be a warrior is still an easy transition.” Sean rolls to lie on top of Marlon, interlacing his fingers on Marlon’s chest and resting his chin on his hands. “We don't hold our kits back from learning violence because we don't think they wouldn't be an asset. We do it so they can have something that you can never get back once you're bloodied,” Sean explains. Then he pauses for a bit. "I assumed that you had lived that easy life. That you were acting like a spoiled brat knowing nothing about violence except about the bodies we sent home to be burned. But I was wrong. You were bloodied as a kit and have been actively seeking out the warrior's path ever since. So I apologise.”

Marlon's silent, trying to discern how he feels about it. Sean gives him the time to mull it over, waiting. “An apology means very little to me," Marlon decides at last. “If I'm only offered empty words.”

Sean sighs. “You're very hard to get to know. When I told you to step down and you instead climbed up… Jed told us both, but me in particular, to trust those who knew the people we don't know. So I've been looking. You won't let me in so I looked at who in the pack trusted you. What I found startled me. Aiden was a given. But other people? Jed, Mike, Jane, Sandra. Frederick treats you like you're far above him and I know for a fact that at the hospital after your challenge he was determined to put you in your place once you both healed up. So something happened after that that changed his mind. The kits adore you. I thought it was only because you frequently took time to play with them but then Clara roped me into play tea party with her. A game you designed and let me just say―” Sean heaves himself up on straight arms over Marlon looking down at him. “You sly fucker!"

Marlon sniggers. “What? She made you drink tea, did she not?"

Sean chuckles and folds himself down again. "There was a fat cat in a dress and bonnet sitting at one of the undersized chairs, a stuffed animal and a soldier doll at the others. She told me I was the delegate of the Manchuria pack from the east, introduced the other delegates, poured us all tea and placed a map on the table. She served us crumpets and sardines and led us through truly tough territorial negotiations. We're talking high-level pack politics. As a kits game! It's brilliant! Karen would have disapproved. Many of us would. But I don't. We're supposed to give our kits a carefree kithood and that's what you're doing, framing your teachings like a game. That made me rethink a lot of the things Karen had to say about you. And then there’s Sandra. She holds you in high regards. She’s been home almost as little as I so you’ve shown her something about yourself after she came home that you haven’t let anyone else see. Any chance you can tell me what that is?”

“Have you asked her?”

“Yes.”

“Then no. She gave me a choice. What I chose required a promise of silence.”

Sean looks disappointed. “Fair. Bottom line is that the highest ranking people trust you, if warily, so there must be a reason for it. I've been trying to get to know you to find out why but you're like fucking ice.”

"And that's why you came to the Sanctuary,” Marlon states.

"Yes.”

"And what did that teach you?”

"Lots of things. That Jed's right about you always being one step away from wandering. That when you do, you already have your own pack ready to follow you if you just pitch them a convincing sale. They might be street rats but they're yours.”

"I won't leave. Aiden's here.”

"Aiden will follow.”

“It would break his heart.”

“So you stay.”

“So I stay,” Marlon agrees. “That’s it? That’s what you found out coming out to party with me? That I don’t feel wanted in my pack?”

Sean huffs and shakes his head. “No. I learned that you are very politically aware and engaged. That you are quick to act in an emergency. That you are a fierce, remorseless fighter who knows how to intimidate your foe. That you are a natural leader with a touch of madness in you who dares to make quick decisions. I also learned that you aren’t too proud to listen to those below you. When I got to the Sanctuary it was clear to me that even if you were the youngest in the group it was you they looked to, to get direction. I’ve seen many people disregard friends’ requests for them to stop drinking whether they can handle their drink or not. So I respect that you listen when they ask you to stop. I strongly disapprove of the drugs, but it’s not like you’re the only person in the pack who regularly does them.”

“Who else?” Marlon asks. The only one Marlon can think of aside from Aiden, that perhaps would, is Michael. But Marlon’s never seen him high. Drunk, yes. But there’s been no indication that Michael takes drugs.

“Not my story to tell. ...Unless you tell me why Sandra holds you in high regards?”

Marlon chuckles. “Nice try.”

Sean grins and winks before he goes on. “At the pack negotiations I learned that you've made a name for yourself and that it carries a lot of weight. We here see you as the troublesome kit that refuses to fall in line. They see you as a strong, resourceful man and a representative of us that has improved our reputation amongst them. And you know what? I should have known. I really should have. When Jed sent us your second book I snagged it as soon as Karen offered me to read it.”

"You've read my book?”

"I've read it so many times it's held together by a prayer. It's a dangerous book and the first to go onto the book burning pyre should the Union win. A political manifesto disguised as a history book. When I read it, I had Karen’s complaints in mind which made me think that you were merely parroting someone else’s conclusions. But you weren’t, were you?”

Marlon scoffs at the insult.

Sean laughs. “Indeed, you weren’t. Do you want to read the notes I made in the margins?”

“I do. Unless they’re about how I should know my place and fall in line.”

“I promise you, they’re not,” Sean answers with a grin.

“In that case, definitely. Jed punished me for writing that book by moving me to a Prog school,” Marlon complains.

“That doesn’t sound like a punishment to me. Did he tell you it was?”

Marlon shakes his head. “It felt like it.”

“But you met Keith there, didn’t you? That ought to count for something.”

“It does. And they have this class called Origin where they teach their own history. I’m tempted to write a new book taking in account what I learned there because I’ve discovered that this ridiculous fear they’ve got of us is something new, and for the longest time we were allies. We don’t always mention them as Progs in our history books. We often referred to them as the traders, and in Origin class they didn’t talk about us but they talked about the protectors as well as places they went to trade. If you study old maps with Packrunning history in mind it becomes clear that we’re referring to each other. Also, did you know they’re using a scientific method to self stunt? Not all of them, of course. But those living on the compound. There was a woman named Amelia Buchanan―” Marlon cuts off and scowls. “Why are you grinning like that?”

“Your history nerd is showing. I love it. Write the book. I’ll be the first one to read.”

Marlon’s lips pull up in a bemused, lopsided smirk. Sean smells excited but Marlon’s hesitant to believe it’s truly genuine. “Okay. It’ll give me something to do until college starts this fall. But only if you promise to read each chapter when they’re done and give me feedback.” That would test Sean’s veracity.

“It’s a deal.” They smile at each other for a beat, then Sean changes subject. “So, Keith. Is it serious?”

“Why are you so darn interested in my lovelife?” Marlon asks with a small wrinkle between his brows and a lopsided smile.

“Love’s nice. It’s natural to be curious.”

Marlon narrows his eyes at Sean and pets his hair. Nevertheless, he answers honestly. “It’s a serious friendship. I’m not in love with him. And he’ll never convert so I won’t mate him. I did ask. He’s certainly mating material, all other aspects accounted for. But his designation prevents it.”

“You’d mate someone you aren’t in love with?”

“Naturally. Wouldn’t you?”

Sean makes a little wiggle of no.

“Have you been mated?” Marlon asks. 

Sean shakes his head again but now with a hint of discomfort in his scent.

“Have you been in love?”

Sean hesitates before he nods. “I have. It didn’t work out. She wouldn’t convert. Nothing to talk about.” He smiles but it’s a fake smile if Marlon’s ever saw one. On top of that, Sean smells anxious. Not sadness, _anxiety_. Marlon finds it odd.

“She was a Prog too?”

Sean’s smile fades. “Look. It didn’t work out and I really don’t feel like talking about it.”

“You expect me to open up to you but you’re not willing to do me the same courtesy?”

Sean remains silent as if he’s expecting Marlon will be a good boy and let it rest. 

“You met her at the front. What happened? Did she get killed?” Marlon probes.

No answer. Sean’s anxiety skyrockets and mixes with stinging anger.

“When I asked you to explain why you had sex with Jed when you knew you were not the one he wanted, you talked about filling a hole inside. I thought you were talking about Jed and Karen but you were talking about yourself, weren’t you?”

Sean remains quiet, meeting Marlon’s gaze for several seconds, pulse jackhammering. Then he suddenly sits up, turns his back and starts scooting out of bed. “I don’t want to fucking talk about it. How fucking hard is that to understand,” he bites out.

Marlon sits up and grabs Sean by the arm before he’s had the chance to get out of bed. Sean spins around with a roar, dropping fangs, flaring, clawing on his fingers and swiping a hand to scratch. Marlon reacts instinctively, grabbing the swiping hand, roaring back, dropping fangs. Sean’s lighting quick. The tussle only lasts seconds before Sean has Marlon pinned to the bed growling a cold threat in his face, fangs bared. Marlon wiggles a little, well and truly stuck, growling back with heart jumping out of his chest. Submission would be a good idea. Marlon’s tried to get Sean this angry since forever, always failing but now he hadn’t been aiming for ire. This came as a complete shock. He stops growling but keeps showing his teeth, frowning deeply with wide, angry eyes, holding Sean’s enraged gaze unblinkingly. He should lick his lips too but he doesn’t. If Sean wants to hurt him for asking questions then the heck with it. Let him. 

What’s the big deal? If he doesn’t want to talk about it he could just keep quiet. It’s not like Marlon could force him to talk. Sean’s always asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer so why should that be okay if he can’t handle it himself. This reaction was completely unwarranted. Especially when they were having a nice time, getting to knowing each other post-coitally after having made love.

_Wrong_.

Marlon had made love. 

Sean was just filling some hole inside of him so he didn’t have to think. Wasn’t it how he’d explained it when talking about Jed?

It’s like a punch in the gut, making him nauseous.

Jane thinks he’s broken, Jed avoids him, Aiden doesn’t need him, his parents left him, Nceba left him, he’s always always always the one who loves the most, who needs the most and to everyone else he’s one in a dozen. A temporary replacement for the one they really want to be with.

He feels duped, hurt. He’d thought they were connecting. In reality it was just him, wanting it to be a mutual feeling.

Sean needs to leave. _Now_. 

“Your service is no longer needed. You may leave. I’ll manage the rest of my Rut myself, thank you,” he says coldly and presses his lips into a thin line.

Sean stops growling and closes his mouth but doesn’t move.

“Your permission to be in my room is revoked. Please leave,” Marlon tries again.

Sean lets go of his wrists and sits up straight, hands sliding to his thighs, his frown starting to go troubled and flare dimming from high luminosity to only normal golden. Marlon lies still with his arms above his head the way they had been pinned. Sean doesn’t move.

“I don’t want you in my fucking room. How fucking hard is that to understand?” Marlon bites out, echoing Sean. His heart hurts. His throat’s constricting and his sinuses are prickling. It would be good if Sean could go before the tears come.

Falteringly, Sean finally gets off him and starts walking towards the door.

“In the future, don’t bother knocking on my door. I shut myself away for a reason,” Marlon says and turns his head away towards the wall. Sean stops in the middle of the floor without turning around. Sean’s anger is fading but his anxiety is getting worse. “Ruts are bad enough as they are. I’m vulnerable. I don’t want to need to pretend I’m not broken on top of that. You’ve got a whole hecking pack outside that door that understands how to have sex to fill holes not to think, so why would you come to the only one who doesn’t? When I make love I don’t want to be the only one. I have enough duty-sex as it is.” Marlon sits up, pulls his knees to his chest, wraps his arms around them and closes his stinging eyes.

“Duty-sex?”

“Didn’t I tell you to go? Just leave like everyone else. Like Jed and mom and dad and Karen and Nceba and _everyone_. Don’t bother pretending you don’t kiss like a Prog. Don’t bother pretending you’re interested in history or my writing or my lovelife. Don’t reference Napa County or pretend you care about the Hales and don’t offer yourself to me. I won’t magically fall in line just because I love you. I don’t need you. I don’t need any of you.” Marlon feels so small, so stupid and abandoned. He’s ridiculous, throwing a fit like this. Dumb to think he could trust Sean or even considering opening up to him. All because of a stupid throwaway comment Sean did about what happened in Napa County.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sean swears under his breath. Instead of leaving, he turns around and then he’s there, wrapping both arms and legs around Marlon protectively, pushing Marlon’s head against his chest and purring comfort against his scalp. His scent bears residue of anger, but is chock full of sadness and anxiety. “So close, but you got it all wrong, Mar. So close.” He kisses Marlon's temple and Marlon leans into it. “I came here thinking you hated me, ready to be humiliated for a chance to be swept up in your scent. You smell like home and I'd love you for that alone. But the better I get to know you… the small glimpses you give me when you let your guard down, I'm loving you for your personality too.. I’m not trying to fill a hole someone else left by sleeping with you, I’m pretending you return my affection.”

Those are two vastly different things. Marlon opens his eyes and listens without looking at him. Stupid tears freeing themselves to roll down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry. The anger, it’s not at you. I got defensive,” Sean goes on. “I shouldn’t, but I’m really bad at feelings, Mar. Useless at expressing them. You asked me about sex when you were a Juvie. But you didn’t really. You asked me about my own feelings about _having_ sex, and why. It’s really hard for me to express. I’ve been forced to disregard my feelings since the day I left college. For the longest time, I wasn’t allowed to have any. And when I did the consequences could have been catastrophic. I fucked up. I fucked up bigtime and then I lied about it. I lied to our pack, to my superiors, to everyone. I corrected the mistake unnoticed with great personal cost. And you’re asking about it. So I’m panicking. I’m panicking fucking bigtime, Mar. I’m not adept at talking about my feelings like you are. And admitting my greatest lie to someone who is always waiting for me to make a mistake, isn’t easy.”

“...Like I am?” The question comes out small and vulnerable followed by a little involuntary sob. Marlon’s shaky, inside unfurling from the spiky, hurt ball he hid in.

“You just threw your heart at me saying, ‘Look at it! You broke it!’ If it were me I’d have plastered a smile on and pretended it was fine.”

Marlon lifts a hand to rub away those stupid tears and shifts to press himself more tightly against Sean. “It isn’t fine.” Resentfully, he adds, “You’re too hard and inflexible. You’re bad with kits.” Two accusations unrelated to this. Kicking mental shin bones.

“I’m more flexible than you give me credit for.”

“I didn’t mean _bendy_.”

Sean lets out a startled little laugh. He cuts it short in fear of angering Marlon but Marlon’s lips twitch in a tiny smile. “Neither did I,” Sean says. “And kits are _loud_. Unionites may often be noseblind but they’re not ear blind. I haven’t socialized with kits since I presented. The ones we got at the front were quiet and stoic - tiny soldiers who’d lost it all and now were determined to take their territory back. There was very little play left in them. You gave them an order and they followed like any other soldier. As for being hard… For the longest time even the simplest decision could be fatal. Deciding how much food or clothing we needed to restock, what route to bring it and so on. If anything went wrong it had consequences. I didn’t lead from up top like a general. My people weren’t just numbers to me.”

Marlon unfolds enough to look up and meet Sean’s golden gaze. “Tell me your big lie. Unless it is something that endangers the pack I make you a Packrunners promise not to tell anyone for as long as you live.”

Sean takes a deep breath, closes his eyes to rest his forehead against Marlon’s. “ _Fuck_ ,” he curses to himself. He takes another deep breath and looks up. “Okay. Okay. But context matters here so let me ramble for a bit, okay?”

“Okay.” Marlon unfolds to wrap his arms around Sean and tuck his head under Sean’s chin, settling in to listen.

“I sometimes forget that you’re not even a year yet,” Sean says. “You’re so young still. I wasn’t that much older when I was sent to war. And I had something that made me unique. I can speak Russian fluently. I’m good at mimicking accents. So I was asked to go undercover. Three of my six medals I’ve received for my work undercover.”

“Six? I only saw four?” Marlon asks.

“Two of them are from the Union. I’ve kept them since they show how well I played my role. But in a way they’re also the reason I don’t know how to deal with feelings… I…” Sean pauses, searching for words. “The Union have both soldiers from Soviet as well as conscripts from countries they’ve conquered. But they rarely trust soldiers from other countries so it’s hard to plant spies that don’t speak Russian, and if you do, it’s hard to get them close to the top. But I fit. For years I lived with them as Yuri, planting misinformation and gathering intel.” Sean quiets down. He’s silent for what feels like an eternity before he goes on. This time Marlon waits without prompting. “So, I was Yuri. I made friends, got them to trust me, climbed the ranks, faced off with us while balancing the fine line between trying to keep our damages down while looking like I wanted the Union to win. Being undercover is hard. To make friends you can’t just say ‘we’re friends now’ and that’s that. You need to get to know them. They become human to you and… real friendships happen. You learn to love people even if they are the enemy you’re trying to defeat. It’s even more difficult trying to blend in as a Prog when you’re a Packrunner. You have to let all your pack bonds fade. You can’t do any of the things we do that stimulates our glands. Can’t knot someone inside of them, can’t give affectionate temple rubs. The times I met up with our pack I had to keep from touching anyone. The times I could get away to come back home I could not greet people properly and had to be careful not to touch things that were marked. I had to avoid you like the blue spot fever, for an instance, since you claimed anything and anyone who came near and kits are veritable biohazards when it comes to bonding. Scent bonds with kits take so little to form and you’d always yell out ‘Shaw!’ and climb up my leg marking your way up as you went.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You were little. Back when I was a Juvie and you were born I’d take any chance I could to sleep with my nose against you because you smelled so good. And you had such a strong grip.” Sean huffs in nostalgic amusement. “You’d grab my finger and hold on so hard I could lift you. Fuck, but I loved you so much. But then I presented and it was off to college and rush to the front and suddenly I couldn’t even hug you when I came home. My love for you would surely trigger the pack bond back to life and I’d have to wait for months in isolation to get the bond to fade again before I could go back. That would make it so much harder to explain why I’d been away from the Unionites.”

Suddenly Marlon’s sad all over but for a different reason. “I don’t remember any of that.” No wonder Sean thinks he smells like home. Sean has a whole set of memories of a shared history that Marlon doesn’t. “That must have been so lonely.” It also explains why Sean’s so happy cuddling. Not that Marlon needs an explanation for that but Sean is starving for it. 

Sean chuckles without humour. “Soul-crushingly lonely. Jed was the one to decide I should no longer be undercover. He was in the tent with me and Karen after I’d given them a briefing. He kept giving me these weird looks. When I was done he told Karen I was no longer to be used undercover. He said that no one is irreplaceable so they had to find someone else or figure out another way to get intel and spread misinformation. He said that within a year tops my cover would be blown and I’d be executed. I claimed I could do it and Karen always took my word for it when I said i could do something. But he shook his head, stepped up to me, pulled me close and gave me a quick, affectionate temple rub and all the sudden I was fucking crying. I didn’t get why I was crying. I was mortified and swore to them that I could do it. But Jed turned to Karen and said that he’d give me a year tops before I’d lose my scent. Unionites don’t lose their scent so if he was right, which I think he was, looking back, I would have had my cover blown. So Karen came and wrapped her arms around me, marked me up, told me I would be her assistant for a while and that my time as a Unionite was over. Karen’s one of my primaries but Jed cemented the bond with me and I couldn’t fucking stop crying.”

“You mean, he poked you?”

Sean laughs. “Poked,” he mutters to himself, then to Marlon he says, “Yes. He fucked me. And I was mortified about crying but I was so relieved it just got too much.”

“That’s what crying is. An overload of emotion. Any emotion. So it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Marlon says. That’s what Arvid had said and Marlon’s sticking by it.

“Years of disregarding any deeper emotion makes me bad at handling them.”

Marlon thinks, backtracking to why Sean panicked and got angry. He fell in love and it didn’t work out... “You said she wouldn’t convert… She was a Unionite, wasn’t she? And if you asked her to convert it means you blew your own cover to ask. That’s what you lied about to everyone, wasn’t it? But you corrected your mistake at great personal cost. So… you killed her before she could tell on you. She didn’t react like you thought and you had to kill the woman you were in love with,” he hedges.

“Yes. Her name was Irina. I loved her madly and she me. That’s why I thought I could get her to convert. I should have known better. She was a volunteer not a conscript, as loyal to the Union ideology as I am to my pack. At first, after I’d told her the truth she tried to convince me to join them for real. When she realised that wasn’t possible she was going to report me. So I strangled her,” Sean says almost flippantly.

The emotions in Sean’s scent as he says it give away that he isn’t nearly as unaffected by it as he appears. Marlon almost gags from the pain and sorrow Sean hides outwardly. But Sean manages to tamper it down quickly enough.

Marlon shifts to straddle Sean’s legs so they’re face to face. “Sean, you can never replace Aiden for me.”

“I know,” Sean says with a small smile. “I know.” Flippant. Too many emotions going on underneath that soft, small smile.

Marlon cups his cheeks and looks into his eyes. “But Aiden can never replace you either,” he says, thrilling when it takes a second before Sean catches on and his eyes widen in wonder. Then Marlon kisses him to drive his point home, opening his mouth to taste his tongue. Sean wraps his arms around him and kisses back, not for pleasure like a Prog, but because he means it. He isn’t just using Marlon to fill a hole, Marlon’s one of the people who’d left a hole in the first place. A kit he wasn’t allowed to bond with that would light up at the sight of him. That smelled like the reason to come home, the reason to go undercover in the first place. Marlon pulls back and Sean looks at him questioningly. “But, Sean. You took my spot. And I’m intending to unseat you,” he says with a smirk.

It takes another second before Sean gets what he means, and when he does he laughs with a burst of happiness in his scent. “I’ll promise you one thing. If I see that it’s what the pack needs, I won’t put up a fight,” he grins.

Marlon chirps happily and leans in to suck at Sean’s ear gland to siphon it, doing what he has refused to do until now. Initiate the bonding that will confirm Sean’s rank above him…

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The link to the Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/coplins/playlist/3jeaomvXjy7MYGwN3njyni?si=gOpPnhRRR9Swm3i7E5Imig) I use for inspiration for this whole story. For those of you who like to dive into soundtracks and the mind of the writer. ;)


	20. Knothead Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon experiences his first lust-at-first whiff when he catches a scent he hasn't smelled since he presented...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel so silly writing penis instead of dick, but it's Marlon's POV so I have no choice. ^^

* * *

The Boltons attack the The Swifts and are surprised by the joint defense they meet. Without Malicia they wouldn’t have known Boltons use the sewers like they do and it’s the detail that undoes the Boltons. They hadn’t expected the sewers to be set on fire, cutting them off from both escape and those fighting uptop. The adults are killed to a man and the kits are adopted into the Swifts and Jayhawks. Marlon is part of the selected group from the Williams pack responding to the Swifts’ alarm. Sean leads them. He’s a competent commander and Marlon has no problem following orders that make sense. Apparently, Marlon does something right in the eyes of the other warriors in their pack because when he gets home he has three more people submitting to him, bumping him up to mid-ranking. 

The newspapers write about the fight. They use headlines like ‘Mad Packrunners running rampant!’ and ‘Market District Massacre!’ There are so called eye-witness accounts saying Packrunners went mad and slaughtered innocents and tried to set the city on fire again. None of which is true. No innocents were harmed and while the battle was bloody property damage was minimal. The Swifts were defending their territory as well as everyone living and working there. The fires were controlled and kept to the sewers and they’d been very carefully studying the sewer maps before even thinking about setting fires. 

“Propaganda,” Sean declares with a serious face and shares a look with Marlon. They both know the big newspapers are owned by Conservatives.

“Yellow journalism,” Jed refutes. “Sensationalism sells.” He doesn’t believe their theory that Conservatives are out to get rid of Packrunning but he does understand how to work a market. And he’s right. Sensationalism sells. But one doesn’t exclude the other and Marlon’s still certain Sean has it right. It’s propaganda. The Union are masters at spreading propaganda so Sean should know how it works. It’s even more obvious what effect the articles have when he goes to visit Keith and sees fear in his eyes for the first time. Marlon sits down with Keith and his family to tell them what really happened. He tells them about all the nasty rumours he’s heard, about the Prog woman who’d lost her home and his theory about the Conservatives trying to weed out both Progs and Packrunners. He doesn’t meet with as much skepticism as he’d expected. They question why anyone would think to do so while the country is being invaded but they’ve heard stories of their own centered around the treatment of Progs.

“But remember, Mar,” Jeffrey says, “It’s not all Conservatives. Most are ordinary, decent people trying to live their lives. If you’re right, it’s still just a select group of very rich facilitating a coup. Not all Conservatives are bad people.”

Marlon doesn’t argue. But even if it’s only a few at the top, every ordinary, ‘decent’ person who doesn’t speak up to put a stop to it are complicit and he’ll judge them as such.

Only two smaller newspapers get it right, one giving a glorified account another a very factual statement of what happened. Marlon looks into who owns the papers and finds that the glorifying paper is owned by a Primal and the factual by a Conservative. He goes to visit them both. The Primal isn’t a Packrunner but believes the Primal way is the only way whether you run in packs or not. The Conservative calls him Packrunning trash and spits him in the face. Marlon questions why he published the factual article if that’s how he feels. “I serve the truth and only the truth! And nobody will come here and tell me I should write lies no matter who they are.” When Marlon asks him if anyone did, he gets the door slammed in his face. Marlon takes it as a yes.

He writes his third book going over each chapter with Sean, debating back and forth with growing excitement as he discovers exactly how alike they think. Aiden’s often present, reading a book in a corner in the room, listening in with half an ear without speaking. “No matter if the Union or the Conservatives win, a writer publishing books like these will be considered dangerous and become a target. This book holds controversial views and refutes all and any propaganda we’ve seen. Use a pen name when you publish,” Sean tells him. So he does.

Marlon hasn’t slept a single night alone since Sean came to him during his Rut. They had bonding sex that time and they keep having it fairly often by Marlon’s measures, but Sean never pokes him. Marlon had flipped over to present that first time, saying “I’ll allow it,” then braced himself to take a penis for the first time. But Sean only rutted between his ass cheeks until he came then lay still squeezing his knot hard with his hand until it went down. Marlon has seen Sean put his penis inside other people before and it makes him wonder. “I like my consent non-verbal. If you freeze up like a skunking O then you’re saying no regardless of your words,” Sean mumbles with a drowsy smile when Marlon asks about it. Daytime Sean’s at the office, evenings are divided between the pack and Marlon’s book, but night time is theirs. Marlon no longer has to choose between sleeping in his room and sleeping with company. Sean always comes to him, knocking on the door with that hopeful glint in his eyes like the cuddle addict he is. And when Sean’s there Aiden often joins them, taking Sean’s presence as a go-ahead to enter. As if Marlon ever would have turned him away. It doesn’t mean Marlon’s magically cured from his insomnia but he sleeps better and falls asleep more quickly cuddled up against either or both of them.

Sean gains weight, a softening roundness covering the hard muscles underneath making him perfect for cuddling. He complains goodnaturedly that he has to eat all the time to keep it, but confesses that it’s worth it for the extra affection it brings him.

Summer’s over far too quickly.

* * *

College is its own kind of hell mostly because it leaves so little time for friends and solitude and puts a lot of extra pressure on Marlon to have sex. Marlon dives into his studies like his life depended on it. He’s aiming to one day occupy a corner office at HQ and this is his ticket there. He shares a room with Aiden in the Alpha house on campus. Keith’s got a partial scholarship and lives in the dorms. Keith and he often study together in the library but Keith will go to party in the Beta house and Marlon’s stuck living in the Alpha house that turns into its own party central over the weekends. Aiden’s loving it. Marlon’s not. It’s all about sex. As an Alpha living in the Alpha house he’s supposed to show off. Have an O under each arm, get laid often and on display. Duty-sex. Duty-sex. Duty-sex. 

He hates the thought of anyone in the pack knowing he’s broken, so he plays his part.

He admits to himself that he loves the Omega Run. He likes showing off his physical prowess. But the prize for doing so is a chore. More duty-sex. And the Os at campus don’t act like they should. Weekends are hell because it’s a free-for-all. Primal and Conservative Os are as forward as Progs and Marlon’s constantly propositioned. And you can’t just get it over with quickly as you can at the Sanctuary. No, these girls stick around wanting a second round if you do it too quickly. Aiden and he have separate beds but it seems like on the weekends there’s always an O sleeping with Aiden, intruding in their room.

Marlon hates it all and has to regulate his sleep with downers, some days taking uppers to get through the day. But he does a good job hiding how he’s feeling. If Sean could live years alone with the Unionites, Marlon can handle this. He uses Sean as his example and sets out to fit in and be the character that’s been written for him in the script, all while feeling more and more discomfort in his own skin, more and more broken. 

A nice surprise though, is how unbiased the professors are trying to be. They all declare that their teachings might be obscured by bias but that they’re trying to teach facts as best they can. Marlon respects that. The same can’t be said for the students and it’s apparent who in the country are the richest. Conservatives far outnumber the other designations here. Much more than they do out in the country as a whole.

* * *

It’s a windy day. Wind strong enough to be debilitating to the sense of smell if you’re not very close or downwind of what you’re trying to smell. It’s the kind of day that are both the best and worst to hunt. If you approach someone from the right direction they can’t smell you and you can stalk very close undetected, from the wrong direction your prey can scent you from miles away. 

Not that Marlon and Aiden are out hunting per se. Aiden’s been nagging on Marlon all morning to come with him to a Conservative meet-up. Why? Because of an O Aiden wants to knot. What else? 

Marlon finally says yes solely because they’ve got a school holiday and he wants to spend time with Aiden, which probably is the reason Aiden wants him to come along in the first place. That doesn’t mean he can’t be grumpy about it and go drag his feet resentfully. Aiden’s striding far ahead of him, stopping time and again to roll his eyes and urge him to hurry.

Aiden’s currently striding several horse lengths in front of him, passing onto a crossing street. He’s halfway over when he suddenly stops dead and turns around, striding back the way he came, wind whipping his short hair from his left since he’s out of shelter in the crossing. “You’re right. This is a bad idea. We should head back. Maybe curl into bed and read something or do a couple of practise runs on the track. Who cares about Os anyway?” he says as he approaches Marlon. He even holds out his arm as if he’s trying to herd Marlon to turn around.

While that sounds good, Marlon’s annoyed by the sudden switch when they could have skipped out of going in the first place and he wouldn’t have had to suffer through all that nagging. So Marlon trudges on, shouldering past Aiden when Aiden grabs him to physically try to turn him around. “You wanted to go, so we’re going. I didn’t put up with all that na―” Marlon cuts off mid-sentence when he steps out on the crossing street and is hit with wind. 

Wind.

Carrying scent.

A very particular scent that Aiden had tried to stop him from catching. Marlon flares, feeling the slight ache in his jaws he gets when his body wants to drop fangs so he lets them grow and turns in the direction of the wind, scenting and looking to see if the source is within distance. When he can’t spot what he’s looking for he starts walking in the wind’s direction. “You go ahead. I just got other plans.”

“ _Turds_!” Aiden curses behind him and follows him.

The stronger the scent gets the more excited Marlon gets. He begins to feel something stir inside of him. He can’t even see the O in question but he’s getting _aroused_ from the scent alone. It’s startling and wonderful. _Now_ he gets it. The thing that stops an Alpha in their track to change direction and follow an O for blocks just to get a chance to say hello. He finally understands why anyone would consider penis poking a priority. His heart’s beating faster, his glands have begun to leak and the buttons in his pants have started to chafe and strain. He elongates his steps and puts his hands in his pockets to feel for what to offer the O. He’s got condoms. Part of him doesn’t want to use them this time but he’s not ready to get someone out-pack pregnant with all the complications that brings. He fingers the bracelet Clara made. It’s beautiful enough. It might do. Not the candy bar. But… his fingers brush the lid of the miniature jar of honey. Yes! Perfect! That’s his gift.

He hears Aiden mutter another curse behind him, following in grumpy defeat. Aiden knows him well enough not to try to stop him, but the curse makes Marlon think they’re close now even if he isn’t sure when the wind’s so strong. He sidesteps a bunch of crates being unloaded from a truck and finally sees his target standing with five other men trying to read a map of the city with great difficulty as it flaps in the wind. He’s got his back turned towards Marlon - blond hair cut short this time, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket.

Marlon lowers his head a notch, flares brighter and opens his mouth to show his fangs in a wolf’s grin, deep-purring. He’s approaching like a predator honed in on a kill, an oncoming train, full of single-minded determination.

One of the Alphas standing beside his O ( _His!_ ) looks up and frowns in his direction and mutters “What the heck,” with annoyance.

“For Ares sake, I’m not even in Heat. Will you cut it ou…” Arvid says and turns around to face Marlon’s direction. His eyes widen in surprise and the exasperation dies, sentence trailing off. 

Arvid’s annoyed companion doesn’t catch Arvid’s change of heart. “Buzz off, knothead! He’s not interested in horny Alphas right now,” he shouts and gestures at Marlon to go away. Behind Marlon Aiden growls a threat towards the annoyed Alpha. Marlon ignores them both, eyes locked on Arvid. He pulls the jar of honey out of his pocket and throws it to Arvid who catches it and blinks at it, looks back at Marlon, gaze landing on where his erection tents his pants, then Arvid’s grinning at him, wind suddenly carrying scents of excitement and arousal and _slick_.

Marlon takes a condom out of his pocket and starts unbuttoning his pants as he goes. Arvid scrambles with his belt, dropping the map to let it fly away while turning around towards the nearest wall. Marlon hears conversation going on but he’s almost there now. Arvid’s dropping his pants, presenting against the wall, flaring, looking at him over his shoulder purring encouragingly. As long as nobody’s trying to come in between, Marlon ignores them all.

“What the heck, Cap? _Cap?_ ”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, this reunion might take a while. I’m Aiden and this is my brother Ares. Arvid and he go way back.”

“ _That’s_ Ares? I thought he was a kit?”

“He was. Not anymore. Can I help you? I saw you looking at a map?”

Aiden’s playing the good wingman. Marlon doesn’t care. The only thing important in the world right now is that he’s close enough to reach out to touch Arvid, to cup a warm ass-cheek goosepimpled by the chill in the wind. Arvid spreads his legs as far as they will go with his pants halfway down his legs. Marlon puts on the condom with one hand and trails his other down to check how wet Arvid is to discover that he’s more than ready to receive.

“Come on, Peepers, I’ve waited long enough,” Arvid encourages.

Marlon presses in slowly, every part of his insides vibrating with anticipation. Technically, the physical experience is like every other sex he’s had - that’s to say it feels good. But emotionally and mentally it’s a whole other ballgame. It’s a darn homecoming. Once he’s bottomed out he pulls down the neckline of Arvid’s jacket so he can reach to milk the neck gland. He wraps his arms around Arvid's midriff and sucks on the neck gland. Arvid keens a purr in pleasure, bucking back trying to get Marlon to thrust. He smells and tastes so good. So _good_. It’s a wondrous kind of high. Marlon shifts his grip to the hips, stands on his toes and shifts his jaw so he can grip Arvid's neck with blunted fangs while taking him. Arvid relaxes and holds still in response but keeps keening.

It's rough and quick and dirty and the best sexual experience Marlon's ever had this far. He's being incredibly selfish, not asking his usual 'how do I make it good for you’, barely thinking beyond how badly he wants them to be locked together, Arvid tied to him by his knot.

He climaxes fast and rests over Arvid’s back, arms hugging him tightly. Scent tells him that as selfish and focused on his own pleasure as he’s been, Arvid has also climaxed.

“You know,” Aiden says dryly from somewhere close beside them. “Normally when you haven’t seen someone for a while, you go ‘Hey. How have you been?’ But not you two. Oh no.”

Arvid chuckles and Marlon opens his eyes to see Aiden leaning his back against the wall beside them, arms crossed over his chest and a completely fed up expression on his face. “Hey, Red,” Arvid says with a sated smile, “How have you been?”

Marlon chirps in amusement and Aiden’s lips twitch. “You two are lucky there are no laws against indecent exposure or you would have been arrested.”

“If anyone would have tried to stop me I wouldn’t be arrested for indecent exposure, I’d be arrested for murder,” Marlon states.

Arvid purrs contentedly and Aiden huffs with a small headshake. “That may as well be, but you didn’t think this through, Mar. There’s a chilly bite to the wind and the good Captain isn’t wearing Omega pants. He’s wet and will be freezing his balls off before your knot’s gone down.”

“ _Heck_ ,” Marlon curses. He didn’t think of that. He didn’t think much at all beyond mounting his O. The sun might be warm today but the bite of the wind is chilly enough to turn cheeks and noses red and Arvid has his pants dropped with slick leaking down the inside of his thighs. It’s stupid and he’s instantly worried about Arvid’s health.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve been knotted in worse conditions than― _Oh_.” Arvid starts to wave it off but changes his tone when Aiden pushes himself away from the wall to squat down beside them, grabbing Arvid’s jeans to pull them up as far as they will go. “Why thank you, Red. I’ve always said you boys were raised ri _iiiight_.” Arvid’s tone changes again and he bucks when Aiden grabs his waning erection to push it into his pants, out of the wind. Arvid chuckles. “Sorry. A bit sensitive right now. Thanks.” 

Aiden gets to his feet once he’s closed Arvid’s belt so only a part of the ass is exposed. “Don’t mention it. I gave directions to your friends. I’m afraid they left without you. I have to say, I didn’t take you for a museum type?”

Arvid sniggers. “I’m not. We have a few days off and they’ve never been in New York before so they asked me if I could show them where they could have a good time. Only once we arrived it became clear that their idea of a good time is vastly different than mine so I didn’t make a very good guide.”

“You’re here for a few days? How about spending some of them in my bed back at campus?” Marlon suggests and hugs Arvid closer possessively.

“Sounds like a plan, Peepers.”

* * *

Once Marlon’s knot has gone down the three of them walk back towards campus. Aiden side-eyes Arvid. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll admit I’m not thrilled to see you. It’s not because I don’t like you but your presence means your company is back in the States fighting for the Union since America doesn’t hire mercenaries, and that means trouble,” he says. 

“Oh, there’s trouble alright,” Arvid agrees. “Things are happening behind locked doors both in the Union and here in the American government. Our company isn’t fighting at the moment. The Union is about to pull back and make a big troop movement to attack elsewhere but I can’t tell you where.” Aiden’s lips compress and he starts smelling angry. Arvid huffs an apologetic laugh. “I can’t tell you where, Red, because I don’t _know_. Neither does the Commander but he’s more troubled by what he’s seeing here in the States than what the Union is up to. So we’re on a break right now while he decides whether to stick around, go back to Europe, or jump continent completely to find another war.”

“What’s he seeing?” Marlon wants to know.

“Well… It’s the forced segregation to start with. It hasn’t been implemented here yet but it’s getting widespread. In some places Progs have to wear badges that identify them as Progs and it’s said that this is so they won’t get mistaken for Union Progs.”

“That makes sense. Marlon says Progs aren’t safe moving around in the city because people think they’re the same and attack them. So if we can see they aren’t, they should be safer?” Aiden phrases it like a question, looking troubled as if he doesn’t really buy it.

“But marking them up won’t necessarily change what people think, it will only put them at greater risk since they can no longer blend in,” Marlon argues. Aiden starts nodding his agreement before Marlon’s even halfway through his argument.

“Mhm. And in most states it’s now mandatory to have your designation stated on your ID. You can’t get an ID or a passport without stating your designation, and if you’re caught lying about it, you can get hefty fines or even prison up to six months. Here, it looks like this,” Arvid says and pulls up his wallet from his inner jacket pocket. He takes out four different ID cards from different states. All have his name on them but two have a big, red “P” stamped on a corner, one a blue “P” and one black “C”. “Here I claimed to be a Conservative, the blue P is for Primal. The red ones are Packrunner and Prog. When I said I was Primal they wanted me to specify if I was Packrunner or not. The use of black, blue, and red ink is consistent through all states and the Commander says it isn’t good. I believe him,” Arvid goes on and pockets the wallet again. “Especially in medium sized cities in states where this has been implemented the longest, this has started to be worrisome. Did you read about that terrorist attack on the school?”

“Where an American Union-sympathizing Prog broke in, shot and killed 32 children? Yes, we read about that. A horrible tragedy,” Aiden answers.

“It was. But we don’t think it was a Union sympathizer or even a Prog,” Arvid says grim-faced. “And in that city there were segregation laws in place. In that school? The classes were divided per designation and guess which designation’s classroom got shot to bits?”

“Progs?”

Arvid shakes his head. “Nu-uh. Primals and Packrunners. In this area we’ve been separated from others in workplaces and schools due to what they call our violent culture. Which reeks because Conservatives have the same base culture as us only they handle it more discreetly. Once again, they say it’s for our own good since people are afraid of us. I’d say that doesn’t make sense since Packrunners usually coexist peacefully with other designations and adapt our behaviour to our company. But that’s not all that reeks. The perpetrator was caught a few blocks away right afterwards and executed within a day. We were there and saw when he got arrested he seemed completely clueless as to was going on. Crap like that goes down near us? We investigate. And we found three cans of scent blockers on the crime scene.”

“Scent blockers are real?”

“Yes. You can thank the French for that. But it’s insanely expensive and one can lasts about 10 minutes. The guy they caught was a poor man. Prog, yes, but without a gun and definitely nowhere near scentless. He was a scapegoat for someone.”

“Another thing that doesn’t add up is that he was an American Prog,” Marlon says with a tight feeling in his chest. “Nobody hates Union Progs more than our Progs. It’s what I’ve always been saying. The government is out to get us.”

* * *

Marlon lies on top of Arvid's chest, naked and sweaty, sated and happy, smelling of joy, slick and semen. His knot's gone down ten minutes ago and he's just enjoying the closeness and how they're so immersed in each other's scent it is hard to tell one from the other. The arousal starts curling low in his abdomen once again so he grinds his limp penis against Arvid's hip to coax another erection into being.

Arvid laughs. “For someone who professed having no interest in knotting you sure are insatiable. I never thought I'd say this but I need a moment to recuperate. I'm not in Heat, Peepers.”

Marlon stops grinding to rub his neck against Arvid's neck affectionately. He can wait. He probably needs a respite too. Or, his body does at least. He's a bit sore all over. It's a wonderful feeling. He's especially happy about the throbbing bite marks on his shoulders. Two have even broken skin to bleed lightly. Arvid's soothed those with his mouth the same way Marlon's soothed the over-eager bites he's placed. He's still failed to ask the important question 'how do I make it good for you’. But he hasn't needed to. Arvid's matched him pace by pace. They'd communicated solely through primal means during their rounds - purrs, growls, nips, chirps and scent. A vast difference between copulating with the fragile Progs or repressed Conservatives.

“Oh no," Aiden says from his place on his bed across the room where he's been watching them for the last hours, even jerking off a couple of times. “This is an anomaly. Normally he's a one hit wonder.”

"Mmmh,” Marlon purrs his agreement. “But it's different when I want it instead of doing it out of duty."

“What do you mean?” Arvid asks.

"You know. Sometimes you have to poke your penis in to keep everyone around you happy or to cement bonds."

“No. You really don't. Especially someone as incredibly affectionate as you. Frequently marking each other up will do just as well. It takes longer, but I'd argue that a bond created that way is better in the sense that you have to spend more time together and get to know each other better. Or, you can go about it through solely siphoning each other. It takes longer than sex but is faster than only marking.”

"Perhaps. But there's something wrong with me. I'm a broken Alpha. Everybody said so. It stressed them out so I do what I have to do to keep them calm.” 

Aiden's scent is souring from distress but Marlon doesn't give him attention. He's much too happy to let Aiden ruin it.

“There's nothing broken about you," Arvid says with a little smile, his blunt, doglike claws trailing up and down over Marlon's back to make him shiver. 

“Yes there is," Marlon argues. “Everybody said so. It's very important to them that I poke people and when I didn't they told me I'm broken. They said I've been sexually molested as a kit and that's why I'm not interested in Os in Heat and poking. Grandpa thinks it's his fault because of what he did when I brought him out of scentlessness as a Juvie. Personally, I think it's dumb. I've told them all my life I don't want to poke my penis in people.”

"That's different,” Aiden protests and sits up in his bed. He's agitated. “No minor is interested in having sex."

“Hah! Speak for yourself,” Arvid smirks. “When I was in my mid-Juvies I was very curious what all the fuss was about. At the end of my Juvies I often played at fake knotting my friends and they did the same to me. We looked forward to try out the real deal. And as I recall, Peepers here took the lovely Laurent to the doctor because he'd expressed a wish to live long enough to have sex.”

"You have a point. But Mar has played knotting games as often as any of us. He got upset when I couldn't play with him after I presented.”

"It was annoying. What's the big deal anyway? I just humped a little and you lost it.”

"Aversion, Peepers. Unlike most, you don't feel it as strongly or you would have known,” Arvid says and snuffles his hair.

"What did Jed do to make him think he damaged you?” Aiden asks reeking of distress and dread.

"By my guess, he siphoned," Arvid hedges facing Aiden before turning his head towards Marlon. “Maybe he even knotted you?" 

“It went down like you told me. He attached himself to my neck and siphoned. I siphoned back and then he put a comforter between us and humped me until he ejaculated.”

" _Damn_. He had the presence of mind to cover you up? I'm impressed. I doubt I would have. Hell, if it was me I would have been ripping at your clothes if you wore any,” Arvid says with an impressed smile.

" _That's_ your reaction to Mar telling us he's been molested?”

“I wasn't molested. I would have allowed it if he wanted to poke me. But he didn't.”

"But you just said―" Aiden sputters. He’s having some kind of meltdown that Marlon doesn’t get. 

Arvid chuckles. "Red, calm down. Your honorable grandfather wasn't in control, Peepers was. Take it from someone who’s been on the other side of this. If Peepers had felt uncomfortable he could have left or gotten an adult to do what was needed the moment your grandfather tried to siphon. But he just told us he siphoned back which tells _me_ he was happily participating. You don't get to decide for him how he experienced something.”

“I don't get why you're so upset. Jed's fine now. Everyone's happy. Bada-bing, bada-boom.”

Arvid caresses a finger along Marlon’s jawline. "Your brother has experienced sexual harassment since he was a kit, Peepers. It’s the curse of the red eyes. He loves you and doesn't want the same thing happening to you. You just told him you have sex out of duty so he and the rest of your pack won't get stressed. Don't you smell his guilt?”

"Normally I'd take offense at Arvid answering in my stead but he's spot on. Jinkies, Mar! Why haven’t you told me?”

"Pfft. I can deal. It means a wasted half hour now and then. That's all.”

"Don't you _ever_ enjoy it?” Aiden smells like he’s close to tears.

"Of course, I do. With you and Laurent and Sean and Keith and definitely with Arvid.”

“So with men?”

Marlon makes a noise that could mean anything. "Don’t think that matters. But Clara hasn't presented, Jane is practically my mom and Nina is gone. I think I’d enjoy it with Sandra but I haven’t asked her.”

Arvid is as calm and content as ever despite Marlon’s confession of having duty-sex. "I'm seeing a pattern. Aside from a few names I don't know, you only mention people you love deeply.” Arvid looks over at Aiden. “Does your pack consider people broken and damaged for craving lovemaking or having the bodily integrity to only want intimacy with people they trust and care for?”

"Of course not! But Mar's never said anything about this before.”

“See, Peepers? You don’t have to have sex to please your pack. Your body, your choice. There’s no such thing as duty sex. The only time you might need to have sex out of duty is if you join a new pack or become a Patriarch. You still won’t have to have sex. Any bonds can be cemented without it. But you’ll feel compulsion to have it. Nobody’s going to judge you if you don’t.”

Now Marlon’s starting to get stressed and annoyed. He pushes himself up to a sitting position. “That’s not true. At school I started getting propositioned as soon as I presented and after I’d turned Os down a couple of times they started saying things about me. That I wasn’t a real Alpha. That I couldn’t get it up. That I was broken. Then I overheard Jane and Jed talking and Jane was worried there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t having bonding sex and didn’t react to Omegas in Heat. And at the Sanctuary you all started saying I couldn’t pick up Os. Making it out as if I was some kind of failure as an Alpha. You have on several occasions literally dumped Os in my lap to get me to poke them.”

“I thought I was _helping_ you!” Aiden couldn’t look more shocked and heartbroken if Marlon had taken a baseball bat to his head and gone to town.

“Red,” Arvid says sternly but not unkindly. “Either you come over here and hug your brother or you go walk it off because otherwise your guilt is going to make me throw up and I hate vomiting.” It’s the backside of having an extremely good sense of smell. Normal people sneezed from stinging anger and sometimes get a bit nauseous from other people’s sorrow. People like Aiden and Arvid got hit a lot harder and could get physically ill from feelings most people couldn’t even smell. 

Aiden comes over and all but throws himself at Marlon, wrapping his arms around him with a wounded clucking noise. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t hecking know. You’d look at me when knotting someone and you’d smell content. I had no idea.”

Marlon’s slightly overwhelmed, hugging back with wide eyes. “I was content because you were happy. Why else?”

“Not helping,” Arvid chuckles and sits up to put his arms around the two of them, purring soothingly. “And, Red, believe me. Your little brother doesn’t need help with seduction. As a kit already he did everything right.”

The three of them talk for several hours, Arvid acting as a middle man to ask the right questions or giving explanations needed to clear up misunderstandings. Marlon ends up telling them in detail, step by step, his sexual experiences. From his first time with Keith and Keith’s gentle acceptance to making love with Sean, playing with Laurent, how he feels about the Omega Run and how at college Aiden and Keith are the only ones he wants to be with at all. How he experiences duty-sex (there’s no such thing, both of them assure him) and how he’s emulating Sean’s undercover work to fit in. By the end of it, the two of them have managed to convince Marlon that it’s okay not to want to have sex, that while his libido isn’t following the norm it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with him. Nothing at all. That if Jane was worried it was because she worried about his quality of life, wanting him to be happy, and that she’ll be as heartbroken as Aiden hearing he’s having sex solely to please her. It’s okay to be selective. It’s okay to say no. And suddenly Marlon’s crying like a kitling. “Look at it this way, Ares. You’re a demi-god amongst men. We need to earn the right to sleep with you. You’ll only reward us with your knot if we can manage to get you to love us,” Arvid says.

Aiden sniggers. “Not the words I’d choose, but the good Captain’s right. We are both matching the physical and mental ideal for a Primal and we belong to one of the richest families in the country, making us attractive to Conservatives and Progs too. People fight for our attention for a good reason. Make them earn it. Be as picky as you want. You stick your nose up the right way and people won’t get offended, they’ll try harder to live up to your standards.”

It changes everything. Most notably, Aiden stops bringing Os to their room and starts initiating sex with Marlon more often. He’s still convinced people need sex as much as he does so they make love or ‘fuck like dogs’ as Sean would have said it, on a regular basis. And it _is_ different. Marlon enjoys that. A lot. They team up on the Omega Run. Regardless of who’s the winner the prize for the O is a go with Aiden unless Marlon feels like doing it. He does, sometimes, now that the pressure is off. There are a few hardcore Primal Os that put up such a fight on the Run it excites Mar and brings that feeling of it being a fun game. It’s a power rush when he catches them, wrestles with them, and they finally turn over to present smelling of arousal and slick. He’s finally starting to come to terms with what _he_ wants and likes. He’s finding out what turns him on outside of only deep love for someone. The weekends they spend at the Sanctuary (which they do more often now, dividing their time between Aiden’s wants and Marlon’s) no longer bring pressure. When Hopper makes a remark about Marlon having lost his touch Marlon shuts him down with “There’s nobody here who lives up to my standards.” And it works.

Sean expresses some frustration. “You mentioned duty-sex that time but it got lost in everything else we talked about or I would have told you myself. But if you’ve really tried to fit in based on my work undercover… do you want to learn? I can train you. I think you have the potential to fit in everywhere if you apply yourself. Not everyone _can_ disregard their own feelings that way without skunking. So if you’re interested in learning how to act…?” Marlon certainly is.

Jed still avoids him.

* * *


	21. A Man In a Wheelchair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The peace between Sean and Marlon has consequences in the pack. Those who had thought of Marlon as a black sheep are starting to see that he's not. Especially since he applies himself so hard in college. He's sailing smoothly up the ranks without having to lift a finger to do so. However, with the shift in his rank, he's starting to feel a compulsion to get his bond cemented by Jedikiah who's still avoiding him. At the same time, Sean's training him in the arts of undercover work. Then Marlon's asked a very important, and to him, exciting, question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Politics! Politics! Politics! :D Shit's getting complicated! How on earth did I ever believe I could tell this story in 3 or 4 chapters?! I have no self-awareness, that's how! ^^ But it's all coming together. And I'm having great writing flow. The muse is pleased with me. ;)

* * *

They’re gathered in one of the common rooms at home. Being called home during a school day is rare and scary. Both Aiden and Marlon had been nervous while traveling only to come home and find the house smelling of joy and anticipation. Then Jane came to greet them with a big smile. _Pregnant._ Marlon hadn't even bothered to hug her. He'd gone straight to his knees to put his nose and mouth to her still unshowing belly to purr his 'I love you’ to her unborn kit. Jane had laughed and hugged his head to her belly, chirping her overjoyed approval of his reaction. She's not the only Omega that's gotten pregnant in their absence. Two more are expecting. They're told that isn't the reason they've been called home. Now they're waiting and Marlon's so excited he's barely keeping from bouncing in his seat. Aiden's seated beside him on the couch much more relaxed but purring as if Marlon's joy is a physical caress to his superior sense of smell. The fireplace is burning merrily. Jed's purring a content all-is-well, looking at Marlon with eyes full of amusement from his favorite armchair. Michael's draped himself over a loveseat and Sean stands leaned to the wall by the door, arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed. His scent is so neutral and breathing so deep and calm Marlon thinks he's sleeping. Sean can do that. Sleep upright like a darn horse. He doesn't even have to lean against a wall like he's currently doing. Marlon envies him.

The door opens, waking Sean with a jerk. Jane comes in followed by Sandra. Sandra's in pre-Heat. Jane closes the door behind them and goes to sit beside Michael, forcing him to sit up straight.

Sandra comes to stand in the middle of the room with a little smile. “So. Some of you know why you're here," she exchanges a look and smile with Jed, “some of you don't have a clue." She looks at Aiden and Marlon, smile widening. She goes to sit on a cushioned chair where she can address them all, entwining her fingers over her lap. “As you all know I don't have a mate. I haven't quite found someone that makes my heart jump like Gregory did and since he died… well. He gave us a wonderful daughter that grew up strong and wise. But I've been thinking about becoming a mother again. Now that we have several Os pregnant at the same time it would be the perfect time. If I die giving birth, chances are there's someone else who can nurse the little one. But the sooner I can get pregnant, the better. My Heat's about to hit. I want to make an attempt.”

That's it. Marlon _is_ bouncing from excitement. He chirps and purrs. “More kitlings!" He enthuses. He doesn't even care that it makes everyone in the room laugh at him.

“That's right, Mar," Jed chuckles. “More kitlings. But pace yourself and wait for what Sandra has to say.”

Marlon reins himself in, giving Sandra his full attention.

She smiles. “Back when I was mated it was a simple choice. But now I've had a lot of time to think about what I want. I want the father to be both intelligent and strong, with a sly streak and great leadership abilities. But I also don't really want to know who the father is. I've always found the idea of a pack-kit appealing.”

A pack-kit is a kit conceived when several Alphas all sleep with the same O with the intention of getting her pregnant during a Heat. The natural selection takes place _inside_ the O. Conservatives find the idea abhorrent.

“You all qualify,” Sandra goes on, "with the added bonus of having scents so similar that even if the kit ends up smelling like you nobody would be able to tell who of you is the father. So I'd like to ask you all if you'd be willing to spend my Heat with me without using condoms.”

"You know my answer to that question,” Jed says warmly.

Aiden, however, has begun to smell anxious. “You know I'll do anything required by me if ordered―” he starts. Marlon interrupts him. Aiden said there's no thing as duty-sex.

“Stop," Marlon says. “Aiden's said he never wants kits unless he meets an Omega that knocks his boots off at first meeting. Ordering him would be wrong.”

Sandra smiles reassuringly. "Nobody's giving any orders. I called you here to _ask_. I know it's a huge thing to ask of somebody. Of course, you can say no, Aiden.”

Aiden visibly relaxes. "In that case I will pass.”

Marlon has only wanted to go in bare with one O before and that's Arvid. He'd refrained since there are complications should he'd gotten Arvid pregnant. But Sandra is part of the pack. There are no complications. “I'll do it," he says.

“It'll be an honor," Sean answers.

“I have to decline," Michael answers. “I'm not the man I used to be. Besides, I've never wanted kits."

“Sandra,” Marlon says, suddenly nervous, "can I make a request?"

“It depends?"

“Since we've never… you know. Can I get to court you until your Heat hits? I don't think it would feel like duty-sex to poke you. It never does when I try the idea on in my head. But we've got a business-like relationship and I would like to know you as a woman too.”

Michael laughs. "You seriously asking her for permission?”

"She's my superior,” Marlon says defensively and gestures haphazardly.

"I don't know..." Sean says teasingly. “Sounds like tactics to me. You're just trying to get the first go,” he jokes. Supposedly the first one to come inside the O has the greatest chance of becoming the father. But it’s nowhere near a certainty.

"Am not!”

Again they all laughing at him, Sandra included. “It's fine, Marlon. If you want to court me I'm not saying no. To me it's not necessary since I'm more than willing to take your knot. But if you want to, I'm not going to the office again until after my Heat.”

* * *

"Hold on, hold on, hold on for a moment now," Dean interrupts. “You said you've never failed to knock someone up. That means you either said no, it didn't keep, or these guys have an older sibling somewhere.”

“If they all came in her there's no way of knowing if it was his or not,” Michael argues.

Marlon smiles sadly. “She was mine. Everyone, me included, was convinced of that. It's true that there's no way of knowing for sure. We all carry the same basic genes. But the chance of my kits getting eyes like mine or Raphael's is much greater and Anna had the most beautiful flare. They were a cerise, and if you looked really closely you could see the streaks of blue that rendered their redness purplish pink. She was the most beautiful kitling I'd ever seen. With red hair, and the hazel green eyes so common in our family.” He huffs in amusement and reaches out to caress Raphael's cheek lovingly. “Of course, I hadn't seen any of you boys yet then."

The brothers chuckle. "I would have been hard-pressed to believe you if you say she was more beautiful than Bunny,” Lucifer says with a lopsided smirk. "You sure would be a contestant for cutest kit ever born,” he adds towards Raff.

“I'll second that," Michael agrees.

“Pictures or I won't believe it,” Dean sniggers. "I'm convinced Sammy takes the first prize.”

"I can't help to note that you speak of her in the past tense,” Dick says. “I'm hoping it's because she grew up and wandered but I fear it's not what happened?”

Marlon turns serious. "I'm afraid she didn't get to live for very long. Sean and I were getting closer to seeing what was going on but she was one of those that had to pay with her life for Jed to believe us.” He suddenly grins. "Conceiving her, though, was an experience that taught me something about myself. To the amusement of everyone involved…”

* * *

Marlon roars, then growls a heated threat at Sean. _Murder. Death. Pain._  
He even pelts on his back only so he can raise his hackles in an additional threat. On an armchair in the corner of the bedroom Jed's laughing so hard he doubles over. Underneath Marlon Sandra's laughing, making the bed shake. Sean's grinning, shoulders jumping in a silent snigger.

“Remember, she wanted us all, Mar," Jed says still laughing.

Marlon jerks his head around to roar at Jed. _MINE!_ It sets everyone off laughing again.

“He'll tire eventually, Jed. You'll get your chance,” Sandra says between laughter. She smells of joy and arousal. Marlon's over-eager and possessive behaviour doesn't bother her the least. They'd spent the day before flirting and talking, Marlon trailing after her deep-purring wherever she went, mindlessly showing off to draw her attention if she was talking to someone else. Doing push-ups in a handstand, climbing the stairs by hanging from his hands on the outside of the railing, lifting heavy objects to carry them to the opposite side of the room, doing that squat-kick dance the Volkovs had taught him. He knew he was being silly. But just like when you're playing with the kits you need to impress your audience and not worry about what others think. She's chosen him as a potential father for her kit and he was simply putting on display what a prime specimen she'd chosen. When he 'discreetly’ put the three books he'd written on the dinner table beside him when he ate it made most of the adults at the table giggle. But that's good. Laughter is good. Even if his antics were silly they're also impressive, so the laughter is something positive. Sandra herself was smiling so wide most of the time her cheeks must have been hurting. He brought her food and drinks, massaged her shoulders, offered her his jacket when they were outside. The more he thought about what was about to happen the more excited he got. Next week there's a chance a new life is spiring inside her and potentially he could have been part of creating it. The thought is awe-striking, monumental, thrilling.

The more they talked the more he liked Sandra. She grew up in a Primal family that ran a small bookstore. They couldn't afford to send their kits to school but both her parents knew how to read, write, and count so they were homeschooled. After that, she read every book she could get her hands on, which were quite a few considering the store they had. They weren't poor per se but they lived a simple life in a small apartment. Her parents weren't Packrunners. She presented already at 15, bumped into Gregory Williams on the street and fell helplessly in love at first whiff. Gregory was old already when they met, only getting Ruts about once a year. On her insistence, they had a kit and the pregnancy and birth were very hard on her which is common with too young mothers. Now that she was part of a rich pack she'd asked to go to college once she'd recuperated. She'd lived at home to be with her kit and mate as much as possible and studied business then switched to psychology in which she majored. Gregory died of old age a few years later and her daughter presented at 15 just like her. Marlon doesn't remember Juliette, her daughter. But she turned 15 when Marlon was 6 so he's definitely met her.

They'd stood outside looking at the stars, talking, when Marlon leaned in to whisper, “Run for me…” And she did. A high-speed chase over their property and when he caught her she fought herself free three times laughing before she gave in and let him knot her. Her Heat hit. Marlon should have had at least two weeks before his Rut hit but at their second go, it was triggered.

That's what lands him here. In bed, knotted with a laughing Omega, regressed to such a feral state he can barely form words - to his companions’ great amusement.

Sean moves, making Marlon jerk his head back to growl murder at him again. But Sean is approaching the bed with his head bent to the side, licking his lips, flare at low luminosity. Marlon changes his growl. _Not murder. Just pain._

Sean stops to divest himself of his clothes and when he pulls the shirt over his head Mar can't see him lick his lips.

_MURDER! DEATH! SO MUCH PAIN!_

Sandra and Jed squirm with laughter. “You're a braver man than I am, Sean," Jed laughs.

Sean drops the shirt on the floor and grins at Jed. “Nah. Marlon's a sweet puppy. You just gotta know how to pet him," he says and shimmies out of his pants. He's approaching again, moving towards the head end of the bed with submissive body language, erection proudly on display but since he’s moving towards Sandra’s and Marlon’s heads he’s less of a threat and Marlon takes his growl down to a mere warning, boxing Sandra in possessively while watching Sean guardedly. Sean puts his knees on the bed and crawls towards them with his face averted licking his lips, making a cooing, submissive sound. Jed covers his grin with a hand, holding his breath in suspense watching them, expecting Marlon to strike. Marlon sits up as Sean comes near. He puffs himself up to look bigger, growling. _Mine. She’s mine._ Sandra’s still on her back and Sean stands on his knees over her giggling face. He bends forward hunkering so he’s shorter than Marlon, looking up at him while leaning closer and closer to his face. He’s still making that cooing sound, licking his lips so Marlon doesn’t swipe at him. Then Sean’s face is close, nose trailing along his cheek to sniff his neck. Marlon’s growl turns into a low, wordless muttering. _Mine…_ Quickly, Sean turns his head to capture Marlon’s lips with his, kissing him, tongue swiping at Marlon’s bared fangs.

_Yes! You! Also mine!_

Marlon grabs a hold of Sean’s head with both hands to kiss him properly, making a range of noises―purrs, chirps, whistlings―that all mean happy, eager, content things.

Jed howls with laughter. “ _Athena!_ I did _not_ see that coming, Sean. If you’d pulled that move when I was knocking up Karen you’d have walked away with a limp. _Hoo boy!_ ”

Sean pulls away with a smug smirk. “I told you he’s a puppy. You just got to show him some lov― _mmph!_ ” Marlon pulls him back to silence him with a kiss. Then Sean gasps because Sandra sucks his erection into her mouth. This is a way Marlon doesn’t mind sharing. In fact, he finds out he likes it. All his. Both of them.

However, when his knot dies but not his erection Sandra turns her head towards Jed and says “Your turn,” while Sean lies on his side beside her caressing her stomach and sucking on her nipples. Once again, Marlon gets possessive and bends down to box the two in with his arms.

Jed chuckles darkly. “Very well. Time to put the puppy in his place,” he says and strips out of his clothes. Sean goes passive and unmoving, licking his lips submissively to stay out of trouble and Marlon growls at Jed. _MURDER! DEATH! PAIN!_

Jed flares his brightest―red so bright you can barely see the pupils―drops his long, impressive fangs and roars at Marlon. Making himself bigger, he then stalks towards them, aiming for the bottom of the bed so he’ll be coming from Marlon’s backside while he growls threateningly.

It’s interesting, this thing about perception. When Marlon was a kit Jed was this super old man who wore suits and wasn’t out warring like the rest. He was ‘grandpa’. The very idea of him as a fighter was unthinkable.

As a Juvie, Jed was still ‘grandpa’, but he also started to become Jedikiah. He was still old, just no longer ancient to Marlon’s perception. When he fooled around with Jane Marlon rolled his eyes and thought of him like a horny old man. He didn’t see a man in his prime dealing with a decades-old, emotionally monogamous relationship falling apart, looking around for a new love. When Jed sauntered into the meeting after waking up from his scentlessness Marlon got his first glimpse of who Jed was to those who didn’t see him as ‘grandpa’.

After he presented Marlon kept seeing the man, Jed. Older, yes, but not yet _old_. A sharp businessman who had the ability to flirt like a bad boy. He’d sleep around like Aiden in a way that didn’t fit with the grandpa Marlon knew that treasured the deep connection of what he’d once hoped to be a life-long relationship. He kept in shape but Marlon had never actually seen him work out. He’d taken the broad shoulders and the muscles under the comfort-weight for granted. Sean had started filling in the blanks for him. According to Sean, Jed was without question the best fighter they had in hand to hand combat. He’d trained Michael, Luci and Sean. Sean confessed that, yes, he’d considered challenging Jed that day of the meeting, but chickened out thinking he stood no chance despite Jed's weakened state. Marlon had been very sceptical.

Until now, that is.

The Alpha who’s now approaching with burning red eyes stark naked and growling might be the most intimidating man Marlon’s ever seen. He shrinks down lower over Sandra and Sean, turning his head so he can keep Jed within sight as Jed rounds the bed. He keeps growling at Jed. _Mine! Pain! Go away!_ But the closer Jed gets the more nervous he becomes. He starts licking his lips, giving his growl a choppy sound. _Mine please. Let me keep them. Don’t hurt me. Go away._

When Jed comes too close, responding by intensifying his growl― _No, she’s Mine! Back off! Final warning!_ ―Marlon pulls out of Sandra and gets off the bed on the other side where he doesn’t have his back to Jed. Instead of climbing the bed to claim his price Jed follows him, forcing him to back away further and further from the bed until Marlon stops growling, averts his face, licking his lips in submission. Jed stops in front of him and leans in close, showing his fangs without growling - a silent warning. 

Behind them Sean gasps and Sandra giggles. Jed straightens up with a grin and turns to give Sean an incredulous and amused look. “The gall! You sneaky turd! You cuckooed me,” he says without anger.

Marlon leans to the side so he can see. Sean’s taken the opportunity to pull one of Sandra’s legs over his hip so he could enter her and come inside of her with the knot on the outside so he can make a quick getaway. “You were the ones to decide to perform a schoolbook example of Packrunning culture so I figured I’d make it complete,” he quips and winks at Jed. It’s true. Everything about this is as basic as it can get, including the sneaky ejaculation. It’s behaviour as old as the dawn of their species. If an O is okay with several Alphas sleeping with her but a dominant Alpha won’t let the others, she’ll allow them to cuckoo - come inside of her when the dominant Alpha is otherwise engaged. All could have been avoided if Sandra had simply growled or roared at Marlon to back off when she decided it was Jed’s turn. Marlon would have gotten off her instantly. But she’s enjoying the feral display of primal behaviour. It’s a definite turn on for her.

Marlon makes a muttered, petulant growl, chopped by his submissive lip-licking. _Mine. Please?_

It draws Jed’s attention back to him and he leans in to give Marlon a quick, affectionate temple rub before he turns and walks to the bed.

Marlon slinks out of the room simply because he feels compelled to stay and watch jealously. He and Sandra have been at it for hours and since they’re both having their Heat and Rut none of them has eaten. Arvid said Marlon was raised right and he intends to live up to that. He goes to the kitchen to get food and drink for all of them even if he isn’t hungry. After he’s made sure she’s eaten he can stick around to deep-purr her until she presents and gives him another go…

* * *

“Can we just stop for a moment to appreciate that both of our Omegas are turned the fuck on by this?” Luci suggests with a smirk.

“Damn straight, I am! That shit is hot. That’s how I want to get knocked up. Bunch of Alphas I want taking turns, going feral? _Damn_ ,” Dean says with eyes aglow.

“Toivo was like that,” Dick says dreamily. “He’d guard the right to be with me and wouldn’t let anyone on except Henry before he’d knotted me. Unless I expressed a wish to have it otherwise, of course. It’s a lovely way to spend your Heat. Although, if I have a kit I already have the father chosen.” He gives Lucifer a meaningful look and Luci purrs smugly.

“One thing I don’t get,” Dean says. “You said that once the pressure was off you sometimes wanted to fuck strangers. But you also say you don’t?”

“Are you referring to the Omega Run?”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t the Omegas that did it. I didn’t feel aroused by them as individuals. Rather, it was the act of conquering that excited me to a point where it translated into sexual arousal. But only when I met hard resistance. That’s why running for just anyone didn’t arouse me, only when running for the best ones. I can get the same feeling when a particularly complicated plan pans out as it should too. Especially if it's one long in coming.” Marlon smiles at them. "Power arouses me. It might not be such a big surprise considering I spent my kithood feeling like I had none. But that was changing…”

* * *

Phillip sits with his back leaned against the old apple tree with eyes closed face to the sun. He opens his eyes when Marlon comes to crouch in front of him to hand him an apple. “Marlon was it? Oh, yes. Mar. Thank you, Mar, that's very kind of you," he says and takes the apple.

"I'm afraid it isn't from your tree,” Marlon excuses when he sits down beside Phillip. The bare branches above them should make that obvious. The 'your’ part is a bit questionable, but since this is the only thing on the property Phillip ever marks aside his room, why not?

“She ate them all, didn't she?" Phillip grumbles. "Darn skunk hag.”

Marlon chuckles. "Skunk hag? Did you try to poke your penis in her?” he asks, watching the kits play on the grass further away.

Phillip sputters. “Dear me, _no_. Whatever would I do that for? It would be awful." He wags his finger at Marlon admonishingly. “It's not a magic wand, you know? It won't turn her into a nice O just because you stick your penis in her. No, it won't. Mark my words. No. This,” he gestures at his crotch, "is best left used for peeing." He gets a thoughtful look on his face. "Although… I wouldn't mind peeing _on_ her," he adds and takes a bite of the apple nodding to himself.

Marlon laughs. He has no idea of whom Phillip is talking about. But to uphold a fluent conversation with him you just had to go with what he said as if it made sense. “Don't pee on her. They'll get mad."

“We don't want that. No, we don't.”

“No we don’t,” Marlon agrees. It’s still a mystery who ‘they’ are. But ‘they’ have at one point or another frightened Phillip, that much is clear. Although, Phillip would switch between theys without defining which group he was talking about and you’d be left guessing.

Sean comes walking towards them lifting his hand in a friendly greeting. Phillip squints at him and pushes his round glasses up higher on his nose. “Sean, is it? Ah, yes, Sean. You're a good boy," he declares and nods to himself.

Marlon chuckles. "Hey, I was the one who gave you an apple. Am I not a good boy?” he jokes and duffs Phillip with his shoulder playfully as Sean sits down on Phillip's other side.

Phillip tssks. “Don't be ridiculous. The world doesn't change shape and bend to the will of good boys.” He takes a bite of his apple and chews. "Did you know people call me crazy?" he asks.

“They do? Baffling,” Sean says with a straight face. The little burst of ‘happy’ in his scent gives away his amusement.

"I know. They think I don't hear them talk, but I do." Phillip turns to Marlon. "They'll say the same thing about you and you don't listen to me. You never listen so I'm going to repeat myself; I support you. If you listen to them we'll live but we'll all die. Stay on course and we'll die but at least we'll survive.”

"Don't worry. I will,” Marlon promises diplomatically. By now he's more than half convinced Jed's right and Phillip isn't experiencing his life chronologically. If that's true this will make sense in a week or a century. Sean smells uncomfortable like most people do when Phillip acts like a cryptic doomsayer.

Phillip pats Marlon's knee. “I know. I know you will."

“Say, Phillip, have you ever poked your magic wand in an Omega?” Marlon asks to change subject, hoping to find something to talk about that doesn't make Sean uncomfortable. Normally it amuses Marlon to see Phillip freak people out but he's home for the weekend and would like to enjoy his time with everyone he likes before he goes back to college.

“Of course! You can't make kits if you don't."

“What? How―" Sean looks completely flabbergasted. He probably meant to say more but Phillip rolls his eyes then turns his head towards Sean with a faux patient expression.

“You see, boy, Omegas have an extra downstairs hole and when she likes an Alpha she starts to leak out of it. When that happens, you can stick your penis in that hole and there will come out a sticky substance out of your penis. But beware,” he wags his finger at Sean. "You'll get stuck. You can't pull out. It's awful! Mind my words. Terrible and awful.” He waves his hands dismissively. "Anyway, it puts a kitling in her belly. A few months later it will pop out all ugly, screaming and helpless.”

Marlon chortles at Sean's expression. "You _did_ ask ‘how’," he points out. Sean gives him a dark look to make him chortle again.

“But you need to make sure her pack has enough Alphas to care for her. If not, you need to stick around and care for her or they’ll get mad―”

“We don’t want that,” Marlon interrupts lips twitching in amusement.

“Oh, no we don’t,” Phillip agrees. “So you stick around. A heavily pregnant Omega is useless. Even more so after birth. And don't get me started about the kitling. Can’t do a thing for themselves. _Useless_.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you have kits?" Sean asks bewildered.

“Of course.” 

"Jed said that you sometimes disappear from us and are gone for days and once even for decades. Is that what you were doing? Poke Omegas like a cuckoo? And that time you were away for decades, you were raising a kit? She didn't have enough Alphas?” Marlon asks.

Phillip nods. “Why else?"

“Wow. I didn't know you were interested in Omegas at all.”

Phillip waves his hand dismissively while chewing. "Oh, I'm not. But sometimes they get all leaky and smell good and before I know it I'm stuck with my penis. Awful.”

Both Sean and Marlon laugh. "And they just let you? What do you do to let you fuck them?" Sean asks with a bewildered and delighted grin.

"You are old enough to know that already, Melvin. Oh, wait. Sean was it? You should know.” Phillip drops fangs with impressive speed, flares brightly, and deep-purrs. He stops abruptly to take a new bite of his apple.

Marlon thinks that if Phillip _only_ communicated by primal means, an O would not be able to notice that he was different so quickly. He might not look much for the world now―all dried out and wrinkly―but who's to say he wasn't more appealing when he was younger?

“The Omega you stayed with for decades, didn't she have a pack?”

"Melly…” Phillip says dreamily and gets a faraway look on his face. Suddenly he frowns, gaze jumping to a point mid-air close by. “Oh, shush. I don't see how that is any of your business. ...No. I know, but I did. … Nonsense!” His gaze shifts to another point and Sean starts smelling of discomfort again. Marlon's used to waiting for Phillip to finish his conversations with people nobody else can see or hear. Either he forgets you're there or he goes on with a conversation with you. Not necessarily the right conversation - it’s a gamble. But still. “Oh, okay. But only because you are such a brownnoser,” Phillip says to invisible person number two. Then he looks at Marlon. “She was the last of her pack. Smelled like Athena herself, tough as nails, and had her own territory. A little cottage and a little piece of forest land. I tried to foist her off on other Alphas but nobody would take her. She was a little…” he spins a finger by his temple while whistling to indicate that she was mad. “As pretty and tough as she was she was dumb as a nut. You couldn't keep up a decent conversation with her to save your life. She was already pregnant when I finally decided nobody is _that_ pretty and prepared to leave. They could get as mad as they wanted for all I cared. But then they came, trying to take her territory from her. Complete nonsense. A good sized pack with a big territory like theirs? They should leave a sole Omega alone. But they didn't so I had to stick around to chase them away. For months they tried. Foolish louts that wouldn't take a hint even when it's carved in blood in their own chests.”

"The fuck you saying? You were in a pack war?” Sean asks with a mystified frown.

Phillip turns his head to stare blankly at Sean for so long that Sean's anxiety spikes and he shifts uncomfortably. Then Phillip turns to Marlon and points at Sean with his thumb. “He's a little slow, that one, isn't he?"

Marlon grins. "Yes he is, but we love him anyway," he says and gets a glare from Sean over Phillip's shoulder.

“Yes, we do," Phillip agrees and turns to pinch Sean's cheek affectionately. “Such a good boy."

Marlon has to cover his mouth not to laugh out loud. He leans in to rub Phillip with his temple lovingly, purring a content all-is-well.

“ _Oooh_ ," Phillip chortles. “That's not necessary," he giggles with a strong burst of happiness. Marlon keeps purring. He knows Phillip loves it.

Later Sean and Marlon walk away, leaving Phillip to enjoy the sun and converse with his invisible friends. “You think he was telling the truth? That he has several kits and has been defending a territory against a larger pack and won?” Sean asks.

"It wouldn't surprise me. He's a lot smarter than we give him credit for and when he gets angry he's quite intimidating. He might have the fastest fangdrop in the whole pack.”

Sean turns his head to throw a look at the ancient man sitting under the apple tree wagging his finger admonishingly at someone nobody can see. "I don't get how you can spend so much time with him. He freaks me out.”

"Jed thinks he lives in the past, present and future at the same time. If you believe that, he makes a lot more sense. Not much, perhaps. But he's sweet in his own way. So what if he says things that don't make sense? Like that live and die stuff.”

Sean smells of fear. "It could make sense, though,” he says grimly and looks back at Marlon with a serious expression. “If he's talking about Packrunning as a whole versus our own pack.”

It sends a chill down Marlon's spine. Apparently Phillip still has the ability to freak him out.

* * *

Sean adjusts Marlon's white bowtie. “Are you sure you're ready to do this?"

“Yes. Besides, you said that the stakes aren't very high if we're recognized.” He smooths his hands over his smoking, only a little bit nervous. Mostly, he's nervous because he wants to impress Sean and show him he's just as good as him. They’ve done easier exercises before, going undercover amongst commoners and in villages surrounding New York. But this time they’ve got meticulously crafted aliases that take into account how they smell, look, and give them a―hopefully―flawlessly constructed past. They’ve travelled out of state to perform this drill. 

“They're not. This is just a practice run. This city is incredibly Conservative. Even the average Conservative will find their attitudes abhorrent. And we're far enough away that the risk of anyone recognizing us by scent is minimal. We haven't been in the papers like Jedikiah has and we don't look like him like Aiden.”

“I know. We are the Carhartt brothers and we are extremely Conservative. We think Omegas are far beneath us and that we are chosen by the One. And we are deranged enough to believe there's only one god.”

Sean chuckles and combs Marlon's hair down to the side with water. “You can't think like that. If you shape your thoughts of your alias with disgust it might shine through. And remember your walk. It’s one of the hardest things to change. Even if you’re disguised head to toe a sharp eye can pick you out in a crowd on how you walk.”

“Yes, yes. I remember.” Marlon recites the cliffnotes of that lesson. “When in a stressful situation even a great actor may forget to tweak their walk, therefore you should always use something that will alter your walk automatically when it is an option.”

“Example?” Sean prompts.

“A pebble in your shoe. Heck, shoes that are too small will do the trick. A bandage around your knee. Something that restricts you. Today a girdle would have been an option. Except I want to make this way of walking second nature to me so I’m not using any.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I want these turds to see me as one of them even when they _know_ I’m not.”

“It’ll make you less attractive to our kind,” Sean points out and turns towards the mirror to comb his hair in the exact same fashion as Marlon. It’s almost eerie how alike they are when they make an effort to be. They’re wearing the same outfit―it’s a white tie dress code party―and have the same hairdo. They’ve chosen walking sticks but foregone the top hats since they’re so tall already and while it would look impressive it might also be intimidating. They are looking to make friends with people, after all. Their scents, general facial structure, fitness level, and same colour eyes makes it so that they’ll easily pass for brothers.

Marlon tssks. “I could cut my attraction level in half and would still be more attractive to our kind than most other Alphas.”

Sean sniggers and gives him an amused look through the mirror but refrains from commenting. It’s true, though. Not because he smells or looks better than everyone else but because he hits so many key points like many of the Williams Alphas do. They smell incredibly prosperous. Often they smell of pain too, but that’s not a disqualifier for Primals or even Conservatives. Rather, their ability not to be hampered by the pain is attractive. They are polite and well raised, knowing how to behave (even if they don’t always choose to be polite). They dress in expensive clothes and jewelry and care for their personal hygiene. They’re built like warriors, honing muscles and agility to suit their body type. Because the Williamses are warriors, they kept up their attractiveness in the eyes of those that struggle through life at the bottom. It’s plain to see that they, despite being rich, aren’t just sitting around getting fat. Marlon stands, walks, and talks with confidence. It's attractive. All he's trying to do is exchange one type of confident walk for another. The ideal Conservative Alpha has a smooth, graceful glide. He walks like he’s in no hurry, has nothing to prove, and is better than anyone else. It’s a walk you see amongst the very rich as well as politicians. It’s swan-, or stag-like. The ideal Packrunner walk is that of a tiger. Marlon knows his walk has become more and more the walk of a thug - company rubs off on you. He intends to change that permanently so he’s not using a girdle like Sean is.

Sean adjusts the chains to his pocket watch. “Will you tell me what’s making you depressed?” he asks apropos nothing.

“I smell depressed?”

“Not right now, you don’t. But you’ve been wilting like a flower for months now.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sean gives him a smile through the mirror with a little nod of acceptance. He looks down to adjust his cufflinks.

‘ _If it was me I would have smiled and pretended it was alright_ ,’ Sean had told him when Marlon thought he was the only one who’d made love and had his heart breaking in front of Sean. Since then, Marlon kept that in mind. He’d watch Sean and see him smile just like he’s doing now when someone said something hurtful or rejected his signs of affection. Just like now. Sean’s asking out of care, feeling hurt by the lack of trust. Trust Marlon _does_ have for him.

“I try not to think about it,” Marlon says, making Sean look up to meet his gaze through the mirror again. “I’ve been starting to feel this… this… _need_. It’s Jed. He’s still avoiding me. And lately… anytime he comes into the room I feel like dropping my pants and scream at him to knot me already. But he doesn’t.” Marlon rubs a hand over his eyes. “Sometimes when we’re close, like at the office when I’m leaned over his desk because he’s showing me something, I’m suddenly aroused and it feels like the air is vibrating. He’ll fall quiet and breathe heavily, carefully..., and then… he’ll just dismiss me. I don’t get it. I thought he’d stop avoiding me once I presented but it feels like it’s getting worse instead.”

Sean nods thoughtfully. “So you’re experiencing compulsion and being rejected. It makes sense. Your growing melancholy, I mean. Jed’s rejection doesn’t make sense to me, though. He’s been depressed lately too. I’d say it’s the same rejection at work on both of you. But when he talks about you it’s always with praise and pride. He knows you’re climbing the ladder. He should know you’ve climbed high enough that cementing your bond with me isn’t enough anymore. Fuck, he should have figured that out the moment he started feeling the compulsion himself.”

Except, Jed told him (he thinks, unless it was a drugged dream) that he’s been experiencing that pull since the moment Marlon dragged him back to life as a Juvie. He can’t tell Sean that without breaking his promise of silence. “Something happened between us when I was a Juvie. I ruined our relationship. I promised not to tell anyone. You’d probably understand him if you knew.”

“But you don’t?” Sean asks. Marlon shakes his head. “In that case, don’t presume I would either. Our hormones are serious business. A Patriarch experiencing compulsion should, and would normally, cement the bond one way or another, _or_ he’d expulse the person from the pack. Jed’s constantly afraid you’re going to wander, so whatever it is you’re not telling me, I don’t think I’d understand him.” Sean turns to face him. “Either way, maybe it’s time you force his actions. You say he’s avoiding you. We don’t see that. When you’re both at home he’s in the same room as you as often as he can. And he keeps looking at you―”

“But only when there are other people around,” Marlon complains.

“So corner him at the apartment. You know the address. You’ve met me there often enough. You’ll find Jed there any weekday night.”

Marlon draws breath to argue but is interrupted by a knock on the door. The server opens the door and bows respectfully. “Mister Aaron. Mister James. Your car is waiting, ready to take you to the party.”

* * *

Marlon’s quiet on the way home. Two days have whizzed past. He’d aced the mission they’d given themselves. He could play a genderist, sexist, designationist, religious turdhead so convincingly he disgusted himself. Now and then he tears his gaze from the view out the side window to look at Sean. He wonders if Sean ever felt like this? Grossed out by his own talents. At one point Marlon had gotten so angry at what one of the men at the party was saying Sean had gotten nervous he’d blow it. But instead, Marlon had gone off on a rant about ‘that Packrunning garbage’ and all was well again. Keith might say smelling someone’s emotions is like reading their mind but he’s wrong. A feeling can have many roots and you’re still left to do guesswork. You want to lie you simply have to say words that match your feeling.

“Are you done brooding yet?” Sean asks, breaking the extended silence.

“I’m not―” Marlon starts but cuts off when Sean sniggers.

“You are. It’s okay. But I was hoping to do a debriefing before we get home. You did very well. Got yourself liked and respected but didn’t take up so much space anyone felt you were threatening their position. You’ve come far. I didn’t see a single trace of your heart-stabbing bluntness.”

Marlon hums. “To be fair, I kept my mouth shut a lot of the time.”

Sean sniggers. “Whatever works. I didn’t learn much of use. Except that many of them seemed to think that Coombs guy was someone to admire. I didn’t manage to talk to him much aside from a quick greeting and what he said while we were all seated for dinner. But he invited you to his rooms for a drink and you stayed with him until noon the next day?” 

Marlon sighs miserably. “He did. And they’re right to admire him. Not for the reason they think. He’s playing them all like fiddles. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone that intelligent. He’s raised to be a Conservative, but he believes in all the gods and doesn’t care for scripture beyond how it can be used to influence and control people. His personal stance is more aligned with Progressive thinking. He said that people should be judged based on their individuality. That if we get hung up assigning them attributes based on gender or designation we’re bound to underestimate them, and in the game of power that might lead to ruin.”

Sean raises his eyebrows keeping his eyes on the road. “That sounds nothing like what he said over dinner. All that talk about impregnating Progs since it’s virtually impossible to lead a successfully stunted Prog into the light of the One, so you have to strengthen their morphic attributes?”

“Fiddle. He was playing them. Although, he _is_ right. You can’t successfully form a mating bond with a Prog if all her primal attributes are dormant. It holds no sway over her and hence you can’t use scent bonds to snipe her. But he told me he’d only told them what they want to hear. He finds the idea of impregnating someone to leave them to fend for themselves and your kit abhorrent.” Marlon grimaces. “But, he could have been telling me what _I_ wanted to hear too,” he admits ruefully. “I was quite charmed by him. I’d say he’s someone we need to keep track of. With all these small pack wars that have been happening, all the new conflict between Progs and Packrunners… if anyone would be able to orchestrate something like that, it’d be him.”

“Okay… Let’s see. What do I know about him. Sullivan P. Coombs. Presented age, 21. Presented late in his 25th birth year. Comes from old oil money. Has been seen in the company of famous politicians from all over the country. Outstanding grades in college where he was a history major. Aside from that, there’s nothing. I couldn’t even find a record of what the P stands for. Did he tell you his middle name?” Sean asks. Marlon shakes his head. “No? It’s probably Pennington or Pierce or something like that. There were three Penningtons at that party. Whoever would name a kit Pennington except a Conservative? Hmpf. Did you find out why he’s in a wheelchair? He didn’t smell like he needed one.”

Marlon looks out of the side window again. Sean had read up on everyone he knew would be at the party. Marlon hadn’t, but that’s because Sean wanted to test him. If he’d insisted, Sean would have allowed him to read the files too. Funny how the only file he longed to read now barely contained anything. “Birth defect. The doctors aren’t quite sure what’s wrong.” He falls quiet and bites his bottom lip.

Sean waits until he realises Marlon’s zoned out again. “Remember the talk we had? About how important it is to tell the true both about what has gone down and how you feel about it? I lied about caring for people and it didn’t do me any good. You’re not even speaking and it feels like you’re lying to me.”

Marlon snorts, lips quirking upward in a smirk. “I guess I am,” he tells the side window. “I might be a bit infatuated. I think he might be very dangerous to us but I don’t want him to be because I want to spend more time with him. If he was a Patriarch I’d be tempted to join his pack.”

Sean whistles. “Wow. Okay, that’s fucking honest. How did you get yourself invited to his room?”

Marlon turns to look at Sean. “He was beautiful. I scented and stared a lot. I liked his scent.”

“So did I,” Sean agrees. “And he’s an aesthetically pleasing man. There’s no denying that.”

Coombs wasn’t as broad-shouldered and fit as most Williamses. But he wasn’t a shrimp either. The wheelchair hadn’t stopped him from building a healthy muscle mass. He had wheat golden hair that curled around his ears and in the nape of his neck, pale lashes ringing warm brown eyes, white, even teeth and a hecking darn perfect face. “No… I came out of the rest room just as he was passing. I stopped and stared and he stopped to look at me looking at him. After nearly a minute’s silence he asked ‘Can I help you?’ So I went down on a knee in front of him, reached out to snag some secretion from his neck, leaned my other arm on his knees and put my finger in my mouth to siphon while holding his gaze.”

Sean makes a choking noise. He drives to the side of the road and stops the car so he can look at Marlon.

Marlon holds up his hands in defeat. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done something so provocative. But the way he was looking at me, and his scent… I had an impulse and there was nobody there except from us.”

“Fuck that. Mar, believe it or not, but I trust your questionable judgement. But Conservatives don’t siphon the way we do―”

“You think I gave myself away as a Packrunner?”

“Due to siphoning him? No. They _do_ siphon. You definitely gave yourself away as being more than you’d let on at the dinner table, though. You made yourself memorable. Sometimes you want to be memorable. I didn’t get two medals from the Union by not standing out. But I’d like to remind you that there’s no thing as duty-sex.”

Marlon chuckles. “That’s what you think happened?”

“If this happened before he invited you to his room, yes.”

“Close, but no. After I siphoned he smirked at me and said ‘How exceptionally rude of you’, but he smelled excited and happy about it. I said ‘You can walk,’ because I could find nothing wrong with him when I siphoned. He said ‘yes’, still smiling with amusement. I tipped my head to the side to offer him my neck and he leaned forward and hecking darn sucked at my gland. It gave me goosepimples. _Goosepimples_. Then he leaned back and siphoned while holding my gaze just like I’d done. Afterwards he asked me to walk in the garden with him. So we did. Once outside he got out of his chair and we walked through the bush-maze, making small talk. After a couple of minutes he started smelling of pain. After maybe ten minutes he was pale and in a cold-sweat. He never complained but I swiped some secretion from him and siphoned again and there’s something wrong with his joints but I couldn’t tell what except how much pain in was causing him. So I swept him up and continued the walk while carrying him. He said ‘I can walk.’ I answered ‘yes’ with the same tone he’d used and kept carrying him. He liked that.”

“I bet he did. For someone who isn’t interested in sex your seduction game is on point.”

“Seduction is fun, even if the prize is a chore,” Marlon admits. With the right target he enjoyed courtship. “But I didn’t sleep with him. Once we got back he invited me to his rooms and we talked most of the night. I slept in an armchair. But I think… I think that if anything would have happened aside from flirting, it would not have felt like a duty. He’s so darn devious and intelligent. And all those politicians you mentioned? He doesn’t pay them, they provide for him. He never has to touch his own wealth. That’s why I think he’s dangerous.” He presses his lips together and hesitates for a moment. “He invited me to come stay with him,” he says at last.

“How long?”

“A month. Longer. Months. He said he wanted us to get to know eachother better. I don’t know if he got me made or if he just liked me.”

Sean frowns thoughtfully. “Jed and Jane would never approve of this. They think we’re chasing a red herring and Jed doesn’t want us to ruin our reputation with the Conservatives.” There was this little detail that none of this was sanctioned by their Main and Patriarch. They knew Sean was training him and they were okay with that. But Jed doesn’t think the Conservatives are out for them and doesn’t want their relationships with powerful Conservatives to sour. “That is, if you _want_ to do more digging on him?”

Marlon squirms. “I like him. I genuinely like him. I’m not sure I’m suited to do the digging.”

Sean nods. “If that’s how you feel we try to find out more the normal way. Like Jed said, nobody is irreplaceable. Not everybody would choose their pack before feelings with no pack bonds at work. I rather you don’t form a friendship with a potential enemy if that means even the slightest hesitation if the day should come―”

Marlon blusters indignantly. “I’d never choose anyone over my pack!”

“Calm down. You think it was easy for me to strangle the love of my life? That shit scars you! It requires madness. I had exactly zero pack bonds when it happened and I still did it. It’s insanity, Mar! Fuck, but we had the beginnings of a mating bond forming. I thank Athena Unionites are so stunted or I’d been mated for sure when it happened and I still would not have hesitated to do it. That kind of mindset isn’t something to strive for, you hear? I’ve had to kill American soldiers to convincingly play my role. Think about that. Just think about that for a moment.” Sean’s turned toward Marlon to look at him earnestly.

If Sean could do it, so can he. Marlon’s jaw sets stubbornly.

Sean sees it on him, that petulant determination. He shakes his head. “Look, Mar… It could be nothing. Coombs could just be a smart guy who knows how to play people to his own advantage. He might not be part of the problem we’ve been seeing. If that’s how it is, then it’s all well. You’ll make a useful friend that might be what we need to help stop the growing divide between the designations. But if he’s part of the group behind it all? You might be risking your life getting close to him. There’s no honour in espionage.” Sean’s repeated that a billion times already. No honour, no glory. Only results or lack thereof. You don’t call out a spy you murder him or capture him to torture and interrogate him and then murder him. “Furthermore,” he goes on after a small pause, “we’d be carrying out an operation unsanctioned by the pack. I want you to think about that too, because if we go through with it you’d have to go behind Jed and Jane’s backs. Nobody in the pack can know―”

“In that case it’s a bust. If I don’t tell Aiden he’ll track me down and drag me home. He said he would after last time I disappeared,” Marlon sulks. 

Sean’s lips twitch as he’s trying not to smile. “So we tell him. Aiden can keep secrets better than you can. Make no mistake, Mar, Aiden is more loyal to you than to anyone else. I said it before, but if you’d leave the pack he would follow no matter how badly it would break his heart. You’ve got the same kind of bond as Mike and Luci did. There’s nothing coming between that.” He goes serious again. “If you’d take the invite and stay away for a month or longer, you’d have to do it under false premises. The respect you’ve gained in the pack will shatter. The pack will think you’ve dropped out of college and gone off to who knows where to do who knows what. Your past will be held against you. You’ll be back at bottom rung when you come back and worst case, you’ll only be allowed to stay part of the pack based on who’d go with you if you’d be expulsed.”

“They’d have to pry my daughter from my cold, dead hands,” Marlon growls.

Sean chuckles. “Believe me, nobody would be dumb enough to try to come between you and Anna. But think it through. Because you’ve fought hard to obtain the pack’s trust and you’d be throwing that away. Even if you tell everyone what you’ve done when you come back, you would still have gone against the Main and Patriarch’s wishes as if we know better than them.”

“We _do_ know better than them. And Phillip supports me. He said so, remember?”

Sean makes a face. “I wish you wouldn’t bring that up. If he’s got future-sight rather than being crazy, everything he says are bad omens.”

“Oh. So small packs who’ve lived in peace for decades suddenly starting pack wars for no reason isn’t a bad omen? Segregation laws, mandatory prayers to the One in school, Progs getting more and more frequently murdered on the streets, the government stealing property and making ownership laws that make it harder for Packrunners, mindless terrorist attacks that supposedly are carried out between Progs and Packrunners but don’t follow our regular behaviour pattern - all those aren’t bad omens?” Marlon’s getting worked up. The Union suddenly withdrew a large part of their army leaving only enough people to be a hassle, just like Arvid said they would. Only, they hadn’t made a new attack from somewhere else yet. Unless you counted a significant increase of seemingly random airstrikes. Even New York had gotten bombed a few times again. At the same time, the segregation laws had spread and new laws were made. The laws affected packs like theirs or the Talons in California very little. Rich and powerful packs with the means to protect themselves from the government. It affected the Hales and Jayhawks very little because they didn’t care much for laws anyway. Packs like the Swifts were worse off only because they weren’t criminals per se. Instead they had to choose between going the route of the Hales and Jayhawks or to work under vast disadvantages. They chose the former. 

Packs like the Volkovs were hit hard. Ownership laws made it so people who hadn’t been US citizens for more than five years weren’t allowed to own property, and it was increasingly hard for Packrunners to gain citizenship. When the Volkovs had sent a messenger to Marlon for help, Marlon had simply taken back the ownership of the property he’d given them, officially hired them to raise horses for him, and suddenly the government could no longer do away with the Soviet pack without intruding on Williams property which would have angered Jed. Whatever the government is up to, they’re tiptoeing around the big, rich packs, trying to keep from raising their ire. 

In the midst of all this four healthy kits had been born in the pack and Sandra’s daughter Anna had made Marlon return like a homing pigeon every weekend just to spend time with her. He’d barely let go of her long enough for Sandra to nurse. There was no doubt in him that she was his daughter. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep her safe. Nothing. And he believes with all of his heart that the Conservatives are trying to eradicate Packrunners and Progressives alike so finding out who is behind it all is crucial. If not, their pack might live on for a while but there’d be no more Packrunners for their lifestyle and culture to continue. No packs for Anna to wander to when she grew up.

“You know I believe the same things as you,” Sean says seriously. “I’m with you. I’m behind you whatever you choose to do. But think carefully. Because you’ll take a hit amongst our own and it might not be the wisest choice in the long run.”

“I’ll do it,” Marlon says without any hesitation. “I’ll go.”

* * *

Dean looks around as all his companions around him start to squirm uncomfortably with different levels of distress in their scent. “Okay, anyone who can tell me why y’all are freaking out?”

“Because, dear, we’ve read history in college. And the animosity between Progs and Packrunners are mentioned. But nothing about segregation laws. As I recall, it was mentioned that it was harder for Progs and Packrunners to find jobs at the time, and citizenship was no longer granted with the same ease. But a lot of what Marlon is telling us now, has been erased,” Dick says. He looks at Marlon. “And I’m starting to think you’re older than your ID says you are.”

Marlon chuckles. “I am. So would Dean’s parents be. Six years were successfully erased from history and everyone involved behind the scenes got their papers tampered with. Conservatives, Packrunners and Progs alike. It was quite a feat but we did it. The great cover up. People forget so quickly and when they seek out sources to see dates and times or facts, most have been tampered with. School books, pack chronicles, government documents. We gave Pack promises of secrecy and the Conservatives involved would rather die than the truth getting known. Two decades after the deal was sealed I heard someone who was alive when it went down but not partial to what really happened tell our adjusted history to a youngster with absolute certainty.” Marlon pauses. “Tell me, Dean, did you ever ask your father about what happened?”

"Yeah, I did. He said he couldn't tell me and sounded regretful about it. I presumed he didn't know.”

Marlon hums. "Oh, I'm sure he did. About parts of it. I was interested to know if he still considered you part of his pack but it seems he has accepted that you've wandered. You see, us Packrunners demanded a loophole to the gag. We promised we would never tell anyone unless someone that was part of our pack directly asks us. I've been waiting for my boys to question their teachings at college and come to me. They never did. But at the date you asked me about the expropriation and today about my youth. Since I am a main player in the game of power around that time I consider the right question to have been asked.”

"That Coombs guy? Was he a main player too?” Dean asks.

"He was the man sitting behind the drape making the puppets dance on their strings. We were lucky, bumping into him. And if Sean hadn't trusted my judgement and allowed me to sacrifice the trust of the pack we'd have no idea. We'd be stuck fighting the marionettes rather than the puppet master.”

"I bet his middle name was Phineas,” Dean declares. "From Phillip's Phineas file that he claimed _you_ had told him about.” Marlon's content smile and scent is answer enough.

“Indeed it was. Maybe I could have swayed what was happening if I'd stayed with Coombs for longer. Possibly not. I went undercover with the forces of a Patriarchal rejection depression at work on me, to befriend and get close to the most impressive person I've ever met. It might as well have ended in a disaster. I don't feel ashamed about idolizing him. He understood politics the way Jed understood business. Better, even. I'm convinced that anyone who got to know him would feel the same way. I dropped out of college and learned more with him than I’d ever do at college. But the Union decided to invade Canada and attack us from there…”

* * *


	22. A Religious Experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon's experiences of going undercover make Dean lose his shit and interrupt the storytelling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently got a collection of well thought-out questions from a reader which excited me to no end since this chapter dive into some of the answers just like the next chapter does. But I'd like to mention two things that my Beta got stuck on that differ from our own history. 1.) Fuck Columbus. He did not 'discover' America here. 2. Europeans reached America before the printing press was invented here. :)
> 
> On that note, Native Americans weren't conquered (genocide and theft of land) the way they've been in our world. They were Packrunners they too and just like we've already read earlier the Williams merged with a native American pack when they came. This would have been the common thing for anyone setting foot on the continent. As a result, native heritage would be a lot more common than African heritage for an instance (no slavery). I've wanted to write in greater detail about it but there's an extraordinary lack of good information about natives that has hampered me. Which is ironic considering how much this story is about biased points of views and erasure in published information and that very same bias is stopping me from finding out what I need. Simply finding out what the common names of the Shinnecock people were made me unable to write more detailed about the Williams pack history since I refused to give the natives European-sounding names.

* * *

Marlon flares, and smiles when the kitling in his arms currently sucking on his nipple watches him and flares when he does. He drops fangs and feels tiny little teeth graze the skin beside his nipple. He purrs a congratulatory ‘ _Well done!_ ’ But then Anna lets go of his nipple to start crying from the pain of dropping her little pin-prick fangs. He lifts her to his shoulder so he can put his mouth against her temple and purr soothingly.

“Teaching her control of her fang drop, flare and pelting is fine, but would you mind holding off from teaching her to claw?”

Sandra’s voice from behind makes Marlon turn around. “Why not?” he asks. Anna grabs his lip with surprising strength and pulls. She stops crying to chirp her enjoyment of the face-pulling. “Oh. I get your point. Still in the face-grabbing phase.”

Sandra smiles. “I don’t know how many times a day she tries to poke her fingers in my eyes. I’d rather she don’t do it while clawed.”

Anna still smells of pain, but the secretion a male Alpha produces in their nipple glands is narcotizing to a degree. It helps calm a kitling, makes them feel less hunger and pain, as well as it’s beneficial for the development of their immune system. In prosperous packs with several Os that can nurse it’s mostly a matter of Alpha instinct when an Alpha lets a kitling ‘nurse’ like Marlon’s doing. But in a starving pack, it might be crucial for a kit’s survival. That’s why you saw it more frequently in the slums. Marlon’s libido might not be much to brag about but his kit-related Alpha instinct makes up for it with a vengeance. “Duly noted.” He flares brighter at Anna, dulls his flare, flares brighter, and dulls his flare until Anna’s mimicking him, letting go of his lip to flail with her little arms with delighted chirps, whistlings and purred sounds. “Hey, Sandra? Do you remember when you asked me to make that choice back when Jed was scentless? And I chose to forgo my own reputation for the greater good of the pack?” he asks without looking away from his daughter.

“Yes,” she answers. From the corner of his eye, he can see a small troubled wrinkle form between her brows.

“I love Anna like life. I’d never desert her. You know that, right? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her safe. _Nothing._ Even if it meant destroying my reputation with the pack again. Even if it meant letting them believe something untrue. I’d sacrifice everything for her.”

He can smell faint anxiety from Sandra. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Nothing. I’m just hoping you’ll remember who I really am when nobody else does.” He snuffles his daughter, breathes in her lovely kitling scent that smells like capital letter Home and wonders if this is how Sean felt the last time he cuddled Marlon before going undercover. Thoroughly enjoying it, feeling melancholy knowing that the next time they saw each other everything would be different. Not knowing when that next time would be.

Sandra closes the distance to wrap her arms around him from behind. “I know, Mar. But you don’t have to worry. All that is behind you now. We all see you for who you are.”

He chuckles humorlessly. “I hope you’re right,” he says. He can’t tell her what he’s about to do but this was the next best way he could think of to warn her that what was about to happen wasn’t what it seemed. Tomorrow he’d say goodbye and head back to college. But instead of going there, he’d meet up with Sean and Aiden at a hotel for one last run through of his alias and the lie they’d made up for him. Once it was discovered he was missing Aiden would guiltily crack under pressure and tell the pack Nceba had shown up and that Marlon had gone with her, leaving everything behind. Since Marlon wasn’t your regular knothead it had to be her. Jed and Jane both knew who she was to him and that Marlon still held her close in his heart.

The greatest comfort was that Sean would be a contact he didn’t have to cover up meeting with. Sean was Aaron Carhartt after all. Unlike Sean, Marlon would be able to keep his bond while undercover. He’d been careful not to mark or be marked by Omegas in the pack recently, even if he’s allowed Sandra to hug him. A Conservative could have many strong bonds but it was more common that you had them with people of the same gender if you weren’t mated. Even a perceptive nose could not pick up the difference between many strong friendship bonds and a pack bond unless the person shared that bond. 

“Remember to control your speech,” is Sean’s last reminder for him. “You want to sound like the aristocratic Conservatives we met at the party.”

Marlon hoped he’d be able to find something out that was worth the deception or he’d be wasting more than just his time.

* * *

The mansion isn’t quite as big as their own back home and it certainly doesn’t have that big, stained glass dome over the entrance hall. But Coombs is the only one who lives here aside from staff. His parents have a mansion of their own in another state. Not that it stops them from trying to interfere. Coombs mother keeps hiring new maids for him. Newly presented Omegas that all are submissive to the point where it nauseates Marlon. Downcast eyes and 100% agreement. At first, he’d thought Coombs had picked them but it turns out his mother is trying to get him mated. At this point, she’s given up trying to pair him off with a ‘suitable’ mate and is throwing any healthy smelling O his direction. To no avail. The only time he shows a shred of interest for them to touch him is after his morning workout when he’s in pain and they massage his legs for him. He treats them well enough. Knows them all by name and doesn’t overwork them. He’s aware of servants when they are in the room and doesn’t speak as openly as he does otherwise.

His conversations with Marlon are amicable and pleasant from the start. They flow easily, but it isn’t until the third day Marlon feels that they connect the way they had on the party. Marlon hasn’t gone into any room he hasn’t been invited. This particular day they pass through a smoking room Marlon hasn’t been in on their way to one of the many balconies when Marlon spots a book lying on a side table beside an armchair. His pulse jumps in excitement and he stops dead. “Is that ‘The Great Migration’ by Maguire?” he asks.

“It is.”

Marlon’s hand is nearly shaking as he puts on his white cotton gloves, picks the book up and reverently opens it up. “How did you come by it? As far as I’ve heard there are only 12 copies left in the world.” It’s not Packrunning history per se, but it depicts a time when Packrunners dominated still and Conservatives were barely heard of in America yet. It’s old enough to be handwritten, before printing was even invented. And it’s lying around here like any other kiosk literature. Marlon strains to read a page. It’s hard not only because of the handwriting, but because English was a vastly different language back then.

“Bought it on an auction in Birmingham. Say, James, is history an interest of yours?”

Too late Marlon remembers that his alias isn’t supposed to be a known history nerd. “Yes. My parents thought it a waste of time. They rather I learn to quote the scripture by heart than how we conquered the Napa County. Anytime I tried to converse with them or their friends about history they’d shush me or make me change the topic. I don’t see why it should be shameful but I’ve learned to not make a fuss about it. A book like this, though…” he bites his lip while carefully turning the page. “As much as I appreciate the beauty of the craft it’s the preserved knowledge―a time capsule of what people believed and thought themselves to know at the time―that makes my heart flutter,” he admits. ‘James’ might not have been known to be a history enthusiast but he thinks he’s given a good enough reason for it.

Coombs smells excited. “Indeed. I’m a collector myself. Most people do not know to appreciate books like that the right way. They see it and measure its value in the price it would fetch on the market.”

“It’s preposterous. A book you don’t read holds no true value,” Marlon answers.

“If that’s how you feel… would you come with me? I want to show you something.”

Marlon puts the book down with the same reverent care he picked it up and goes to follow his host. Coombs takes him to a pair of locked double doors, unlocks them and rolls his chair to the side for Marlon to step through first. It’s a library. It’s a treasure trove of knowledge and the greatest collection of rare books Marlon’s ever seen. He swallows dryly with true awe. “If you were an Omega, I would mate you,” he says voice barely above a harsh whisper.

Coombs chuckles, scent heavy with excitement and happiness. “Go on. Look around.”

Coombs follows him around to watch him with a fascinated little smile as Marlon wanders around, touching the spines of some books lightly in wonder. He’s so excited it borders on arousal. “I did not expect to find Progressive and Packrunning books in the library of a fellow Conservative,” Marlon says, recognising some titles.

“I told you before, James. If you only look to your own kind you’ll blind yourself. Tell me… rarely have I come across the mention of what happened in Napa County as a conquering. It’s widely accepted that Ellis and Montgomery rid themselves of competing packs that ultimately led to their Omegas having no choice but to wander very far or mate Conservatives. Likewise, their Alphas only had Conservative Omegas to mate. Their packs whittled down to nothing as older members died and their young came of age to seek love. Why do you define it as a conquering?”

"There was almost no influx of new people at the time, Ellis and Montgomery gave in to greed and alienated the other packs by causing them hardship. At the same time, Conservative literature and stories gained popularity and a lot of effort was put into leading the despairing packs into the light. Not all conquests are violent.”

"Very true. Have you read the literature that held the county in sway? Or did your parents deem it unfitting too as my parents do?”

Marlon presses his lips together regretfully in a non-answer. “I've been told it was merely romance stories targeting Juveniles.”

"It is. The modernized books are still popular today and as simple as it seems they're still a reason Primals end up converting. I strongly recommend that you read at least one. I have them in my other library in the east wing. But do you know the true reason why a religion like ours, that so blatantly demands a disregard of our biological nature, is so widespread?”

"It's the only right way and sooner or later everyone will feel a yearning for the Light.”

Coombs smirks lopsidedly. "Is that truly what you believe in your heart to be true?"

“My parents would disown me for uttering any other answer.”

Coombs chuckles. "Your parents are dead," he states bluntly.

“Their spirit lives in my brother. No matter how tarnished my reputation might be I still hold him in my highest regards and do not wish to cause him further embarrassment.”

Coombs bows his head in a graceful nod. "A diplomatic answer. Very well. I shall respect that. But might I inquire if you're willing to hear out facts even in the face of the blasphemy they represent?”

Marlon smirks. "Sir? When I do not speak, I am listening.”

"And you don't speak much.” Coombs smiles, a sharp gleam in his eyes. His face smooths out. "I should have known better than to ask. I feared I might have spoken too freely when we first met. But despite your own declarations of a very Conservative worldview, you seemed… receptive. Not until I didn’t hear from you for weeks did I start to begrudge myself my blunder. I thought my invite was given too soon, perhaps under the influence of too much champagne and bad judgement. But then you showed up here unannounced. I presume you weren’t completely put off by the announcement that I believe in the existence of other gods despite choosing to honour only one?”

“Could be. Or it could be that our family holdings are all on occupied land and my brother wanted me to help lighten the burden on our strained economy,” Marlon answers with a small teasing smirk that gives Coombs a glimpse of teethed canines.

Coombs laughs. “My, my. That would certainly be a good reason. Trading your companionship for bed and board. Not uncommon these days.” He tilts his head and scrutinizes Marlon with a small smile playing on his lips.

“Mmmh,” Marlon agrees. “Coincidentally, your speeches at the dinner table had him convinced that you’d be a good role model to lead me to a proper faith. He doesn’t believe me pious enough. I did not divulge the blasphemy you shared with me in private. I say, he has no business knowing what reaches my ears when I’m not speaking. I say, better he thinks I’m solely here to stay for as long as the invitation lasts, giving us a reprieve from burdening relatives and family friends with our presence. It would do me no good if he thought of me as… receptive.”

Coombs is excited again. Even more so than before. He bites his lip, brown eyes enlivened. “In that case, James, I shall do my best to lead you to the proper faith. You see, I believe all of the gods exist. I believe they were created, same as us, vastly more powerful and on another plane of existence. If they can meddle in the affairs of man, they don’t do so often. I doubt they care about the trivial squabbles of mere mortals. However, the scripture of the One god differs from all the other gods in one significant way. It’s the reason our faith spreads and gains popularity.”

Marlon turns to face Coombs, away from the bookshelf he’d been inspecting. “Go on.”

“The One was originally just one pack god amongst many. He was referred to as simply the Star, or the Wayfinder. He was mostly worshipped by nomadic packs and seafarers since his star shines like a beacon and can be seen even after the sun has risen. Back then he was just as commonly referred to as a she as a he.”

Marlon sucks in a surprised breath and Coombs’ smile broadens. “Indeed,” Coombs agrees. “It’s nothing his earthly representatives want you to know, if they even know themselves. They’d rather it never get known that he used to be a pack god who stood for guiding the traveller home. But he was. For the longest time. And during that time, his worship was quite like any other god’s. Packrunners have always been accepting of divergent personal faiths. Even when a pack holds a certain god as their protector they will not reject an individual member choosing to honour a different god. But that changed thanks to the people we now call Unionites. Progressives as we know them, aren’t a cohesive group. What they have in common is a drive to stunt their morphic attributes to a point where they become a static species. Most Progs you speak to today won’t know the biological origin of it. It’s something we’ve seen happening in isolated groups on all continents long before the faith of the One god had become what it is today.”

“I’ve been taught that the Progressives came into being to rebel against Conservative world views.”

Coombs nods. “The modern American Prog, yes. But the Conservative way of life was born out of wars with the Progs we today call Unionites. It’s a survival method, you see? The nature and harsh climates where they lived called for either the feral type of Packrunning we see in the north of Scandinavia and, looking at another species that lived alongside the modern human at the time - Siberians. Or, it required faster reproduction than any morphic species can manage successfully. If a morphic Omega, human or otherwise, has too many kits too quickly, she is likely to die. Static species recuperate faster after birth and a successfully stunted Prog can have a kit every year, often recuperating fast enough that she even can care for her offspring without the help of an Alpha. There are other physical changes in these people. They no longer feel scent attraction which means no matter sex or gender the grown offspring can stay with their family. There’s no wanderlust and no greater risk of inbreeding. The love between parent and child or siblings rarely shifts into the romantic and sexual realm as it does for us if the Omega doesn’t wander before the aversion period is over. And many millennia ago in the Northern part of Asia, a group of people chose this survival strategy. Perhaps not purposefully like today’s Progs, but they did.”

“It stopped making sense to run in packs in the same way―” Marlon nearly slips up and says ‘we do’, but catches himself, “―Packrunners do today. Instead, you’d choose to live in family groups,” he muses. “But it would still make sense to pool resources with other families in a harsh climate. It would allow people to specialize and divide tasks so those best suited to do something would not have to waste precious energy on other things.” Like in any pack. But with housing based on bloodlines. As if the Unionites tried to make a whole people into one, big pack.

“Very good,” Coombs purrs. “For centuries people in this region chose to forgo their primal senses until they were completely dormant or non-existent. Essentially, they were no longer the same species as we are. And they bred far more quickly than we can. Granted, a Prog does not live as long as we do. But they don’t have to. They have time to raise more kits in their lifetime than we could ever think about doing. And as with any species whose population sees a growth explosion they outgrew their territory and had to expand. When they did so they ran into Packrunners. Only, Packrunners are very particular about how they share their territories. I don’t know how much you know about them but their politics and laws are as intricate and complicated as ours. Did you for an instance know you can bind a whole pack if you manage to coax a promise out of a single member? Lest he’s expulsed, the whole pack will honour the promise no matter the consequences.”

“That sounds foolish.” It’s a point of pride for any Packrunner. It’s almost painful to deride it.

“Beyond belief. But very practical. Although, make sure to phrase yourself correctly because if there’s a loophole in the wording they will find it and use it.”

Marlon nods. “Rhetoric is everything.”

Coombs purrs again, smiling at him with those white, perfect teeth, dimples drilling into his cheeks. “It is. And the theory is, that the Unionites figured out this little flaw in the Packrunning culture that turned an enemy trustworthy. They had small packs scouting for them, sniffing out big, dominant packs, then they’d attack. We have all these morphic advantages working for us, but just as many working against us. They’d kill the Omegas and kits first if possible. A pack consisting of only Alphas are more likely to abandon their territory and flee. On top of that, they soon realised that killing kits and mates could send the survivors into a hard fade―”

“Making them scentless, defenseless, and even likely to die on their own.” Marlon walks up to Coombs and squats down in front of him. He crosses his forearms on top of Coombs' knees, looking up at him with rapt attention. None of this had been part of any history book he’d read. Just like Scandinavia, the USPR clammed up about their history.

“Exactly. And it’s around this time things started to change. The Unionites had become a conquering nation with a rapidly advancing technology. In Europe, we weren’t even aware of their existence yet. We were about to discover America and find Packrunners that acted just like us. Our expansion was a friendly one. Settlers merged with existing packs or let the natives show us territories we could settle on. Our technology wasn’t as advanced as the Unionites’ yet either. Meanwhile, the Unionites kept conquering, and their constant targeting the dominant packs in the area is what gave birth to the first Conservative scripture. It was written by a mated pair, a Patriarch and Main named Vladimir and Jelena Mikhailov. It looks nothing like the scripture today. However, it did list rules that would allow for survival. It stated that no territorial scent markings aside from your nightly dwelling were allowed. It stated that no family should exceed one Omega and two Alphas. And it stated that instead of scent-markings, the pack would put the symbol of their pack god on their property. And it worked. It prevented the slaughter since the Unionites often let small packs and unaffiliated Primals be as long as they weren’t hostile. And Unionites didn’t meddle in local religion.”

“So the big pack hid in plain sight. But wouldn’t the small packs the Unionites hired to weed out the dominant pack be able to figure out the ploy?”

Coombs smirks and makes an aborted motion as if he wanted to reach out and pet Marlon. “I have no doubt they did. But remember what I told you about loopholes?”

Marlon chuckles. “They were hired to find the scent markings of dominant packs. I see it. By my guess, when the tactic worked runners were sent ahead to warn other packs.” That’s what Marlon would do. Had done. He’d warned the Hales who’d warned the Swifts, Jayhawks, and Boltons. “Only, humans are simple creatures so rather than saying to mark things with the symbol of their pack god they were to mark it with the star of the One because that was what had worked. And Packrunners worship several gods so adding one more to their roster wouldn’t be unthinkable.” That’s how it could have gotten twisted. Marlon could see it. If the messenger they sent wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Like a whispering game.

Coombs chirps in delight and makes another aborted movement as if he wants to touch Marlon’s face. Instead, he puts a hand on Marlon’s forearm and lets it rest there. “That’s exactly what happened. Have you read about this?”

“No,” Marlon answers earnestly. “I thought Elijah Hill was the first mouthpiece for the One.”

“He was the one who wrote the scripture that we base our modern day religion on. Still, it was very unlike today’s scripture. When the Unionites had their first brushes with Scandinavia rumours started spreading down through Europe. Hill heard these and was very concerned for the people of his beloved country, England. So he updated the rules, claiming the One had spoken to him, and he added the two reasons belief in the One is so widespread today, as a safeguard to make sure as many packs as possible would get the warning in time.”

“And what is that?”

“That there is no other god but the One, and most importantly, that it’s every Conservative’s duty to spread the word to try to bring as many people into the light as possible. No other popular religion has that. You’ll never find a Primal, Packrunner, or Prog who’ll tell you what god you should worship. If anything, they’ll tell you about all the options that are out there so you more easily can find the one that suits you personally. And the moment the scripture changed to declare we had to have monogamous relationships, control over the Omega was a must since the loss of a mate can be so devastating with only one mating bond.”

“But today us Conservatives aren’t safe from the Unionites. Do you know why that is?” Marlon’s soaking up the knowledge like a sponge. He’ll ask for sources later but he believes this man will be able to provide them. His own speciality is American Packrunning history and even then his knowledge can’t come near comparing to someone who has a collection of books like this one.

“Oh, yes. Naturally. Inter-breeding.”

Marlon forms his mouth into a silent ‘Ooh’. “Of course! It’s like you said at the dinner. If a stunted Prog has a kit with someone who still retains all their morphic abilities the kit has a high chance of being morphic. So to combat this they started to enforce their own beliefs in the areas they conquered. Over time compliance would lead to conversion.”

“You catch on quickly. Now, the European and American Progs came into being in a counter-movement to the Conservative beliefs, just like we’re taught in school. They’re next to impossible to convert with their lack of scent-attraction. The one who controls the scent-bonds, holds the power. That’s also why Packrunners are so hard to convert. An unaffiliated Primal Alpha will forgo his old faith for his mate. But Packrunners teach their Omegas they are meant to lead, to speak up and to know their value. She will not convert to the scripture as it looks today. Hence, if she mates a Conservative Alpha he’ll be the one leaving his faith behind for her. Luckily, they rarely mate outside of their designation.”

“Luckily?” Marlon answers his own question with the next breath. “The one who controls the bonds holds the power. We would not want to lose Conservatives back to Packrunning.”

“The One god is merely a figurehead to dazzle the masses so you can control them. Have you ever wondered what could make so many Packrunners convert in Napa County when their original beliefs are so unlike ours?”

“I do now,” Marlon answers. It’s a detail that has bothered him since he was a kit. It’s insanity. Conservative scripture is insane.

“In that case, come and let me show you my most treasured belongings.” Coombs squeezes his forearm gently before letting go. He stands up when Marlon does and walks to a vault door in the back of the library. He reeks of excitement when he opens it and throws a look over his shoulder when he steps through, as if he wants to make sure Marlon’s really following. The room inside is dark. Even when Coombs hits the light switch the light is muted. The room is long and narrow and it holds a long, narrow glass stand and a small table without a chair, which makes sense for someone who gets around sitting in a chair for the most part. Inside the glass stand, is a long row of books, some inside of drop front boxes, others aren’t. There isn’t a speck of dust to be seen and the temperature and humidity in the air are controlled for conservation. “Those not in boxes are copies, I’m afraid. I still keep them here. Over there at the far end are the copies of the Mikhailov documents that gave birth to our version of the faith. Here, closest to us, is the latest printed edition of the scripture, and in between are the versions in falling order. If you quote the scripture to me I can tell you which version you’ve been taught, they’ve changed so much over time.”

“And grown thicker, it seems,” Marlon states.

“That, they have.” Coombs walks to the middle of the glass stand and unlocks it. He takes out one of the drop front boxes and walks to the small table. “When bad times befall people they look for two things. Reassurance that things will get better and someone to blame that is not themselves. If you can give them that while offering a distraction, you’ll be able to control them. Astor Cabot, the famous missionary, was masterful at this. The distraction he provided was romanticized ideas of Truemates. He’d tell the stories of love that would keep his audience enthralled. He kept Juvies as his main target. Juvies are still forming their idea of what the ideal romantic relationship looks like but they’re yet to experience pleasures of the flesh so when they present they’re more likely to confuse infatuation with finding their Truemate and mate monogamously. I strongly urge you to read one of Cabot’s stories. They will shed new light on why Packrunning died out in Napa County and stayed that way until the Talons decided to claim the whole East coast as their territory.” 

The Talons are East Coast equivalent of the Williams pack; A pack that’s grown so influential other packs consider themselves living on their territory even when they’re not. These dominant pack recognizes the smaller packs’ territories as owned by the small packs but will care for and defend the whole domain at a greater scale. Back in the days when they tried to get a unified government of the country as a whole (an initiative taken by Conservatives), the states had been named after the dominant packs in the area and maps had been drawn according to their domains. If America had been formed the same way today Williams and Talon would both be state names. Several of these packs still existed in present day - the Carolinas, Akakazes, Kkazes, Teyshas, Ioways, Tanasquis, to name a few, but they were no longer the dominant packs. The exception had to very recently been the Teyshas pack down in Texas. At this point Marlon doesn’t know if there are any Teysha survivors left since Texas is under Union control. Names and borders had been altered over time, but settled about a century ago regardless of pack activity.

“I will,” Marlon promises as he watches Coombs unpack the old book with an exhilarated feeling dancing under his skin. This is his love kitty and pet peeve, the questions he’s asked since forever and Coombs is handing him answers with a gift bow.

“Cabot didn’t have to provide someone to blame. Ellis and Montgomery had, as I presume you know, diverted the river which made them antagonists in everyone’s eyes.” Coombs straightens up, steps aside and gestures invitingly at the book. “I already saw that you know how to handle old artefacts so let me present to you our scripture as Cabot was preaching it.”

It’s not even a third of the contemporary scripture. Marlon’s whole being is electrified with excitement. For his inner eye, he can see Aiden smirk and say ‘Your history nerd is showing, Mar.’ But here it doesn’t matter since Coombs seems to also be vibrating with restrained excitement. And as Marlon reads with gentle care for the old book, he starts to understand. Cabot was preaching a very lenient version. Furthermore, the scripture Marlon had to study to do this job as well as the practise run, told a lot more stories. It was embellished and dressed up in anecdotes. This was much less so and instead more of a practical guide of conduct. “This is amazing. It even talks about how to break a mating bond the right way if your first mate wasn’t your truemate after all! My father would have me flogged for just suggesting something like that. And it talks about same-gender sex as a relief for Heat and Rut symptoms as well as friendship bonding sex. I would never have thought… And the way it speaks of the Omega. There’s nothing about us being superior and it instead explains why and how an Alpha should care for her to ensure she and the kit will have the greatest possible chance of surviving and thriving despite only having one Alpha. This is _nothing_ like the scripture my parents had me learn by heart!” This all sounded sensible. Different, but sensible. For small packs, it wouldn’t even make that much of a difference in way of life. One mate instead of two or three, strong friendship bonds instead of a pack. One god instead of many. And this scripture still spoke of Alphas having to live up to the standards the Omegas demanded. Nothing about Omegas being submissive and subservient. There’s even a section detailing when it’s okay to have sex with someone of the opposite gender that isn’t your mate. (If nobody of the same gender is around to help someone suffering badly from their Heat or Rut, and done in a polite manner that does not disrupt or distract people around you. Real lovemaking is reserved for your mate.)

Coombs rests a hand on his back and chuckles. “We are biologically designed to run in packs and we must never forget to take that into account. Cabot was a master storyteller, but not everybody is, so the version after this one looks more like the scripture you’re used to seeing. But the very strict version that is popular down here in the south was written by Silvester Ormund about six decades ago. Had it been his version instead of this one, the Napa County would never have been conquered. If you want to lead someone into the light it’s better to serve them bite sizes instead of trying to jam their throats with our bitter brew.”

That night Marlon lies awake reading, plowing through several of Cabot’s romance stories for Juvies. He’d have thought stories of romance that target Juvies would be a waste of time since they weren’t sexually active, but he’s wrong. He sees himself and Nceba in these stories. They depict spiring love that flares into life at first whiff, grows into deep friendship and ends with both presenting and experiencing that passionate attraction Marlon felt when he first scented Arvid after he’d presented. These stories either depict two kits/Juvies meeting, falling for each other to build a deep relationship with even deeper trust, overcoming hardships together, _or_ , they depict a young girl meeting an adult male Alpha building a mentor-like relationship that shifts into romance when the girl presents. It’s never the other way around. Still, those stories resonate with Marlon due to his own relationship with Arvid. Every single one of these stories depicts relationships with a profound respect for each other. Had Marlon grown up reading stories like this he might have held the ideal of finding a truemate close to heart. And looking at religion as a tool to gain power over people rather than a faith and lifestyle, it suddenly made sense to want to convert a whole country to become Conservative. Progs and Packrunners can’t be controlled the same way. Unaffiliated Primals are basically Conservatives or Packrunners that haven’t found a cause yet. That’s why their designation wasn’t marked in red on their IDs. This is what’s happening in America right now. Someone has been feeding America bite sizes of conversion for a very long time under the guise of protection from the war. It’s been bothering him why anyone would try to create a divide in the middle of a war, but now he sees how that instead makes it the perfect opportunity.

He wonders if Coombs is just a scholar who sees what’s happening or if he’s part of the machinators currently pulling the strings.

Over the next few days, Marlon spends his time reading, discussing history and religion, and doing more reading. At night he reads until he’s dragged into unconsciousness by exhaustion. Early morning he’ll work out in the gym alongside Coombs. Afterwards, Coombs gets a massage from two of his servants to ease the pain while Marlon sits beside him to talk. In the evening they smoke a cigar and have a whiskey on the balcony. They’re so close to the front they can frequently hear gunfire and explosions and sometimes see pillars of smoke, but Coombs shows no fear about this so neither does Marlon. Coombs expresses a deep admiration for the tactics of the Unionites. Especially, their penchant to use their enemies against themselves by hiring Packrunners to fight Packrunners and then do away with their hirelings. It reeks of what happened in the slums back home and the pack wars flaring up all over the country. Marlon’s more and more convinced Coombs is behind a lot of what’s happening. He’s also more and more entranced by the charismatic man. Touches between them become more frequent, so does lingering looks and discreet scentings. There’s a constant state of tension in the air.

Coombs doesn't only have history books, he also has historical books. When he sees Marlon pull out a book on religion he stops him. “If you're interested in learning about other religions you should not be reading books written by our kind that summarize them. The books you want are over here.” He leads Marlon to bookshelves full of folklore and fairytales. “Word of mouth was always the number one way of relaying knowledge. But the Scandinavians started carving runes into stone early on. If you take a stroll through a forest untouched by the Union over there, you’re likely to come across random carvings on stones and mountain sides. Sometimes it’s tales like these ones, sometimes it’s silly scribbles like ‘Torvald has a tiny knot’ or ‘Ragnar purrs with the trickery of Loki’. In Finland today, it’s common that people know how to read these runes but not the regular alphabet. Although, literacy is much more widespread in Scandinavia in general. As a result, their mythology is preserved to a greater degree. The Union destroys any runic stone they come across. It makes the scholar in me weep, even if I can see the point of doing so.”

Marlon is soon swept up in the old folklore and mythology that he can barely tear himself away. Even back at home he’d been served most of his religious knowledge by word of mouth. In school knowledge of gods and beliefs outside of the One, was summarised in a few paragraphs. Here he got to read about gods from all over the world. Asian gods, European gods, American gods, African gods. Many gods seem to be related, having the same basic mythos. Ares and Mars appeared to be the same god reinterpreted. It’s no surprise Marlon is particularly interested in Ares, and choose to see him as misunderstood in stories that ridiculed him or saw him as a simple-minded god of destruction. “I could get lost in these stories for days,” he tells Coombs when he rolls his chair up beside Marlon where he’s seated reading.

Coombs chuckles and puts his hand on Marlon’s shoulder with an eyebrow arched in amusement. “James, my dear friend, you already have.” His face shifts into concern. “But I think a reminder is in order. You do know sleep is elementary to our well being, do you not?”

“I do. But there’s so much to read and so little time.”

Coombs chuckles. “If you fear you’re going to overstay your welcome, put those thoughts out of your mind. You have all the time in the world.”

Marlon turns his head towards where Coombs’ hand is rested on his shoulder and inhales deeply, only narrowly avoiding to close his eyes to enjoy the scent of his benefactor. “Then I hope I will stay in your good graces for a long time, Mr Coombs. The entertainment and company provided here is how I’d imagine heaven if it was tailor made for my enjoyment.” Coombs rewards him with a dimpled smile and excitement lacing through his scent. Marlon hadn’t even had to lie.

* * *

Coombs regularly leaves his home to meet people. Marlon isn’t invited to come along and normally Marlon spends the time reading, but once a week he goes into town to call Sean. 

“I’m not sure if he’s behind what’s been happening, or if he’s simply seeing what’s happening and putting words to it,” Marlon says to Sean. “He’s brilliant. And his collection of literature? It’s like walking around with a mental erection all day. The most extraordinary part is that he’s read every book he owns. He reads them all before he shelves them or puts them in storage. He’s done that since he was a little kit and started collecting books. He moved to the opposite side of the state from his parents because his parents didn’t understand the importance of preserving the thoughts of past generations. And he considers old fiction as important as science. I have barely begun to explore the vast collection of his and I’ve already learned more than I have during my time in college. It’s incredible. We’re so close to the front we can hear the fighting and see smoke pillars and it’s still like being inside a glass bubble that exists outside of time and space, removed from any conflict of the world.”

Sean laughs. “Now, that’s what I call gushing. Keep in mind that no matter if he’s just a scholar or part of what’s happening, he _is_ the enemy.”

“I know, I know.” Marlon makes an annoyed, dismissive gesture with his hand even if Sean can’t see him. “Could you ask Phillip to put together a file on Coombs for me?”

“ _Phillip_? Why?”

“Just do it, okay? It’s a gamble. But if anyone can find out more, it’s him. He might be confused and mad, but maybe he isn’t and in that case I believe he― You know, what? Just ask him. It’s not like he’s going to rat me out to the rest of the pack or as if they’d take him seriously if he does.”

“Ookay,” Sean says skeptically. “If that’s what you want. Hey, Mar? Did you tell Sandra?”

“No. Why?”

“Because the kits are all dead certain you’ll be back, their faith in you unshakable. But so is Sandra’s. The rest of the pack… they’re not happy with you. Fuck, Jed had a temper tantrum like I haven’t seen since―” Sean cuts himself off. “Just… You’ll be on thin fucking ice when you get home. But Sandra has this steadfast belief that you’ll be back and whatever you’re doing it’s for the good of the pack.”

“You know she knows something about me that I’m not allowed to tell you. She has reasons to trust in me, Sean. Good reasons. I didn’t tell her.”

“Okay, fine. Just be careful. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

It’s not like Marlon’s holding back on what he feels for Coombs. He’s open about his admiration and fascination when he speaks with Sean. But he might be holding back about this growing wish for physical closeness. He’s told Sean about Coombs’ more frequent touches, lingering looks and discreet scentings. And sure, he’s told Sean that he’s returned them. But he may have left out that he doesn’t need to act or lie to do so.

* * *

One morning after their workout before Coombs rings the bell that will call the servant girls that will massage him, Marlon reaches out to put a hand over the bell just as Coombs reaches forward to grab it. Coombs looks up at him with eyebrows raised in question. “Do you wish to have me give you the massage today, Mr Coombs?” Marlon asks.

“I have servants trained to do that for me,” Coombs answers with a small hint of anxiety in his scent.

“I did not inquire for your staff roster, Sir,” Marlon answers with a small, lopsided quirk to his lips. Rhetorics is everything.

The anxiety in Coombs’ scent peaks as he’s too still for several seconds, then he leans back with a guarded smile, anxiety dissipating. “Yes. I would like for you to massage me today, James.”

“With pleasure,” Marlon says and gestures towards the padded bench.

Coombs gets up, strips out of everything but his underwear, lies down on his belly and Marlon gets to work. Marlon does his best, trying to mimic how he’s seen the servants go about it. He’s enjoying himself, revelling in the skin-to-skin contact and purring a content all-is-well while he works. It doesn’t take too long before he can smell something that never happens while the two servant Omegas work on lessening the pain - _arousal_. 

“Is my work satisfactory to you, Sir?” Marlon asks with a smirk.

“You’re not nearly as adept as my girls are,” Coombs murmurs.

Marlon chuckles. “I will blatantly call you a liar, Sir. My skills might not be up to the same physiological expertise as Miranda and Angela’s, but there’s nothing wrong with my olfactory senses. I can smell that I have lessened your pain far more than their educated hands ever have.”

Coombs turns over to lie on his back, underwear tented with a small wet spot of leaked precome. “How rude and ungentlemanly of you to call me out on my predicament,” he states with one of those guarded smiles. There’s anxiety in his scent again but mixed with excitement and arousal. The more turned on he’s gotten the less pain has there been in his scent.

“As I recall, you did not invite me because of my polite mannerism. If it’s your wish, I will stop, and withdraw to let you regain your composure. Then we won’t speak of this again. Or, you can let me go on, and be assured I see nothing shameful in the enjoyment you’re taking. After all, isn’t the touch between two individuals who hold affection for each other supposed to be pleasurable?”

Coombs scrutinizes him for a beat before he relaxes and closes his eyes. “Then I shall enjoy…”

Marlon keeps massaging the legs with long double-handed strokes. He drags his hands upward so far he almost grazes Coombs’ ballsack before he pulls back to do it again. He’s acutely aware of how every gland on Coombs’ body is leaking profusely, spreading the beautiful scent of the man in the room. Acutely aware of every time Coombs’ erection twitches and how warbly Coombs’ breath is. Marlon goes on for longer than the girls usually do. He runs a hand on either side up the thighs and in under the fabric of the underwear along the hips. As his hands go up over the hipbone the fabric strains over Coombs’ erection and balls, making him gasp. Marlon’s breath gets heavy, his own glands leaking so he can feel secretion run down his throat. He repeats the motion a couple of times then lifts his hands over the underwear to continue the motion up from the hips onto the stomach, feeling it twitch beneath his palms, up to the chest. He’s leaning forward since he’s placed to massage the legs and when he leans a bit further it puts his face right over Coombs’ erection. When Marlon swipes his fanned fingers over Coombs’ peaked nipples Coombs gasps again and squeezes his buttocks, bringing his erection even closer to Marlon's face. Marlon stills, stuck staring at the growing wet spot on the fabric at the tip. He has the impulse to taste, to lean down those extra inches. He wonders what it would be like. Keith likes giving blowjobs but has stopped Marlon when he’s offered, claiming he isn’t a fan of getting them. Sean, Arvid, and Aiden… when Marlon’s been with them they’ve all been distracted by biting, kissing, sucking on glands. This is uncharted territory. Not because Marlon has any particular hangups about it.

Would Coombs want that? Would he allow it? Coombs freely admits to believe in all the gods but has chosen to honour one, like most Packrunners do. But he’s a Conservative and Marlon’s not sure _which_ scripture he abides by. He’d watched Marlon read the Napa County version that held detailed instructions of how to best have Alpha-Alpha sex, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t following one of the scriptures that forbids it. Marlon should know better than anyone that physical arousal doesn’t equal mental arousal or consent. Marlon thinks their attraction is mutual but both of them have been dancing around it. Nothing’s been stated in language that can’t be interpreted in several ways. Coombs has put the full responsibility on Marlon.

A drop of secretion from the gland behind Marlon’s ear tracks down his throat and frees itself to drop onto the underwear below. Marlon’s gaze flicks up to look at Coombs’ face and finds him looking back under heavy lids. His expression isn’t giving anything away except passive arousal. Marlon waits for a few seconds frozen in time, waiting for a go-ahead or a rejection. Coombs neither says or does nothing. You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

The clock on the wall strikes 9.

Coombs breathes out in half a hiss. “Thank you, James. It seems your magic fingers have eradicated the pain in a way none of my girls can duplicate. I’m afraid I’m set to leave the house for a couple of hours and need to depart in an hour. So it’s time for me to get ready.”

Marlon straightens up with a hammering heart while Coombs sits up. “In that case, I shall withdraw to await your return.” 

“I won’t be too long. I expect to be back before two o’clock.” 

On impulse, Marlon steps up close, reaches out and massages Coombs’ already profusely leaking neck glands. He does so, looking Coombs straight in the eyes. Coombs holds still and lets him do it with a faint upward quirk to his lips. Marlon make sure his fingers are coated with silky oil and cups his hands to gets as much of the secretion as possible before he retracts his hands, inclines his head gracefully with a “Sir,” and leaves the room.

He hurries to his assigned room and quickly struggles to get out of his pants trying not to use his hands. He’s infinitely grateful he’d only been wearing his workout clothes - a soft pair of pants held up by a tied string rather than buttons and belts.

Free of his pants and erection at half-mast he backs up against the bed and falls backwards. He keeps one hand cupped resting on his thigh while he rubs his face with the other, getting Coombs’ scent all over until his senses drown in it. He uses that hand to stroke himself to a full erection, closes his eyes and envisions what might have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted by Coombs’ duties. He thinks of what he would have wanted to happen. He plants his feet on the bed legs wide apart and with the hand still full of Coombs’ secretion he reaches to massage his hole until he’s relaxed enough to breach it with his finger…

* * *

“ ** _NO!_** ” Dean’s outburst startles them all. “How the _fuck_ could you be so fucking stupid?! Holy fucking shit, you’re a total moron! And don’t get me started on Sean. _Fuck!_ ” He gets off the bed and starts to pace, glaring and growling at Marlon who smells like this reaction is absolutely delightful.

“I don’t see why you’re so upset. He was just jerking off,” Luci says, trying to calm his Main.

Dean sputters. “ _Just jerki―_?!” The anger in his scent spikes. “Holy fucking shit, I mated not one, but _two_ idiots! Michael, can you be so kind to explain to your idiot brother why I’m angry?” he says and gestures jerkily between Luci and Mike.

Mike licks his lips uncertainly. “Um…”

“Fucking hell! You too?! Raff!” Dean looks from Mike to Raff then rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe this. All I’m getting are blank faces. Like, Dick can be excused because he ain’t raised a Packrunner, but y’all? _Fuck._ I ain’t letting you leave this house until you can tell me why your dad and uncle are complete and utter morons, okay? Like, I’ll literally lock the doors and throw away the key if y’all don’t get it. Fuck. I need to eat something,” he declares angrily and stomps out of the room.

“You’re thinking about food now?” Luci asks, distressed and confused.

“ _No._ I’m going to hyperventilate in the kitchen for a bit until I can function normally,” Dean yells from down the corridor, then they hear him turn around and stomp right back. “Okay fine. I’m gonna have to spell it out for y’all, ain’t I?” He scowls at Marlon. “And wipe that smug smirk of your face. If it wasn’t for your ability to tell a story so it feels like it’s happening in real-time, I wouldn’t be this pissed off.”

Marlon chuckles darkly, smug smirk growing wider.

“You know you were being an idiot, right? _Right?_ ” Dean demands.

Marlon nods with that pleased little smirk firmly in place. “I know now. But I confess I didn’t see it at the time.”

“You fucking should have. And Sean should have told you ‘fuck no!’ when the topic of the invitation came up. But y’all bought into that bullshit that Conservatives are different than us. Hell, you were so busy trying to mimic these differences that you were completely blinded by it.”

“Are you going to tell us the problem?” Raff asks.

“Tell you? Holy shit, college was a complete waste of money on all of y’all! Marlon’s already told us! He told us when Arvid told him as a kit why the Union failed to infiltrate Swedish packs;” Dean starts recounting, holding up a finger, “He told us when he said that despite his hangups against taking it up the ass, he still was totally fine with the thought of Jed fucking him.” He holds up another finger, counting the points he’s making. “He told us when he talked about the discussion of adopting enemy kitlings. He told us when Sean put to words what was going on between Jed and him. And he told us, _in great fucking detail_ , when he told us what Coombs told him. The answer is in his fucking storytelling!” He waves his five fingers in the air pointedly. “He said they spend a lot of time talking but he isn’t detailing every discussion they had. And I’m thinking they were deep and fucking interesting discussions. So why is he telling us about certain conversations? Because they fucking matter. If you’re only hearing your dad telling you he had interesting discussions you ain’t listening properly because Coombs is smart as fuck, okay? Like, scarily so. He’s so smart he could very well be fully aware of who Marlon was. He’s telling Papa in plain language why Papa won’t succeed in his mission. At this point I’m on my fucking toes hoping the Union will invade Canada this very minute to get Papa out of there.” Dean looks at Marlon. “Did he know who you were? Did he?” he demands.

“I don’t think so. But like you said, he could have. And had one of his schemes been put on hold for a few more months, present day would have looked completely different,” Marlon admits.

“You’re gods be damned right, it would,” Dean says. “None of your sons would have been born.” He looks at the Williams brothers. “None of y’all.”

Raff and Michael look vaguely worried, distress in their scents. Luci curls in on himself to wrap his arms around his knees, forehead wrinkled in a worried frown. He’s feeling immense pressure to solve the puzzle or Father will be disappointed. Dean, _his Main_ , is already disappointed in him. The sheer pressure of it makes it harder to think. Beside Luci, Father’s purring contentedly. 

“Dean, would you be so kind to walk us through this. There’s a significant amount of emotional distress in the room and I think we don’t need more drama than you already provided with your fight earlier,” Dick, the wonderful hero, asks calmly. He’s a gift, removing the burden from their shoulders.

“Alright, alright,” Dean holds his hands up in surrender and sits down cross legged at the foot of the bed so they’re all sitting in a circle. “Cas was a Conservative when he came to us, right? He was just a Juvie and he didn’t talk much about his past, but he did tell us he believed in ‘Mr. Star-Lord’.” He makes air quotes around the name. “It’s the reason he ended up where he did. He had nothing so he followed the morning star, or as he said, the guiding light of the One.”

“The Wayfinder,” Raff states.

“Yeah. Exactly. Since that apparently is his original name,” Dean says, calming down. He’s still agitated but trying to keep it from showing too much. “So Cas believed in him. Even after he’d been adopted into our pack, he kept his faith. He prayed sometimes. He liked to carve the star on stuff. He said it was because the One led him to me. And to us, he could worship any damn god he wanted to as long as he ran with us, right? He only converted to a Packrunning lifestyle. And he could do that because while Conservatives are normally fucked in the head, they’re exactly like us. They form mating bonds as easily as we do as well as friendship bonds. You meet someone somewhere you no longer know if they’re a Packrunner or just a Conservative who is close with their family and friends, right?”

“Right,” Mike agrees.

“And you all know the story of how dad and Cas fooled the hormones we produce, shifting the leadership to Cas so both of us could stay with the pack. You can shift rank with behaviour. We all know that. In his own pack Papa thought himself equal to Sean, second to Jed. But he thought that while he was still bottom rung. At that time he felt no actual compulsion to get his bond cemented by the Patriarch. That didn’t come until he’d shot up to top tier in the eyes of the rest of the pack. And y’all know how to snipe somebody?” Dean looks at the brothers who nod.

Dick raises his eyebrows in question.

“You use bonding,” Dean tells Dick. “All you need is a mating bond or a bond to a Main or Patriarch. I was gonna snipe Luci if necessary when I heard Sam had gotten mated. Lure him into our apartment so Sam and he could have kickass sex, then join the fun. If I could keep him there long enough his mating bond to Sam would have made the process of cementing a pack bond a lot faster. _Bam_. His pack bond to the Williams pack would have faded and with it his loyalty would have shifted to us.” He chuckles ruefully and rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t _know_ he was a Williams at the time. I just wanted my little brother to be a happy camper.”

“It’s hard to imagine that I’d ever would forsake my loyalty to my family,” Luci says.

“You would have, son,” Marlon says. “You’d still love us and do your best not to harm us. But if the situation demanded it, your top priority would have been to your new pack.”

“Pack politics can be biological warfare. Compulsion is a fucking bitch. Believe me,” Dean agrees. “The saying ‘we are one’ isn’t just an ideology. We literally merge and become part of each other. ‘The one who controls the bonds’ and all that jazz,” he says and makes air quotes again. “You get what I’m sayin’?”

Raff leans back with an aha-expression. “I see it now.”

“But Coombs was a Conservative,” Mike states with a troubled frown. 

Dean groans and falls forward to faceplant on the bed. “Are you even listening to what I’m saying? It’s basic biology,” he complains into the comforter before pushing himself up to look at Mike. “Conservatives discriminate against disabled people because someone disabled will have a hard time taking care of a kit on their own. We don’t. How many people is the least amount of member a pack can have?” He answers his own question without waiting for an answer. “ _One._ Coombs was in a wheelchair but he was a smart as hell motherfucker. If Coombs was a Packrunner, what would we see him as?”

The penny finally drops for Mike. “Oh fuck. A Patriarch.”

“Bingo.” Dean snaps his fingers and points at Mike. “And your old man went in undercover while suffering rejection from his own Patriarch. It doesn’t matter if he saw himself as equal or above Coombs because he _deferred_. He acted as if Coombs outranked him. Just like dad did with Cas. And now Papa is telling us he was starting to feel the compulsion to cement his bond with his new Patriarch. It's so fucking obvious that's what he's feeling cuz he mentioning that he finger fucked himself with Coombs’ secretion yet we know he has issues about taking it up the ass.” Dean looks at Marlon. "Did you get that that's what was happening?"

Marlon chuckles. “I certainly did not. And even if I had, the person I was most adept at lying to, was myself. I didn't want him to be an enemy.”

"Yeah, cuz the company and environment was like a heaven tailored to you, like you said. And I fucking hate that bastard. If Coombs was alive I'd fucking kill him. Listening to this is like seeing my mate and Patriarch get sniped before my eyes.” 

"But if Sean could do it, Father should have been able to do it too," Michael persists.

"Sean could _not_ do it. He went in without any pack bond at all to pretend he was a Prog. He fell in love with someone unable to form a proper mating bond. That weak-as-shit mating bond he was talking about was one-sided and woulda been as easy to break as Sam and Luci's bond was when it first started forming.”

"Quite right. We both made a mistake not to consider that,” Marlon agrees.

"How much further did you take it before you left?” Lucifer asks Marlon.

"I'll tell you all once we get some food in us. Let’s all move to the kitchen. And if Dean still needs to hyperventilate, he can do it there,” Marlon says.

“Fuck you,” Dean retorts with a scowl. Marlon sniggers and winks at him.

* * *


	23. Forcing A Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon is falling deeper and deeper under Coombs' spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is long. :) Partly because I answer some questions in the text that added to its length. But I know any reader of mine isn't averse to long chapters or you would have given up on me a long time ago.
> 
> I want to point out that the political opinions stated in the story are the opinions of the characters.

* * *

Marlon strolls through the west wing library―the one with mostly contemporary books―when he sees a book that makes his breath catch in his throat. He moves over to stare dry-mouthed and frightened. There it is. His own book. He scans the rest of the titles on the shelves and soon finds that Coombs owns all three of his published works. The other titles here are mostly unknown to him. He pulls a few out to read the summaries and put them back in again. They’re not sorted by genre or author and it takes him a while to find the common nominator. Every single one of them is written by Progs and Packrunners and all of them, facts or fiction, show a strong bias for their own designation. There are even fairytales with cute pictures. He leafs through the short fairytale books and discovers that he loves them and wants to buy them for Anna. They’re dazzling and funny and perfectly depict pack life. He takes out his own book, palm sweaty, and stares at it.

“So you found them.”

Marlon jumps when Coombs speaks. His heart beating hard in his throat. “You gave me a startle, Sir,” he says when he sees Coombs come rolling towards him with a lopsided smirk and a sharp gleam in his eyes. “I did not expect you home so soon.”

“I was motivated to keep the meeting short. But standing at that shelf, you’re in your right to be frightened.”

That’s it. Coombs knows who he is. What should he do? Make a run for it? “How so?” he asks, voice level.

“Those are the most dangerous books to our cause to be published in the present day,” Coombs answers as he rolls up next to Marlon. “They are the reason we want to keep a large part of the population illiterate. Which book are you holding? Ah. Yes. That one, in particular, made me nervous. You see the name of the author?”

“Marlon Williams.”

“Yes. Have you heard of the Long Island Williams pack?”

Marlon wonders if Coombs is only toying with him now or if he truly doesn’t know who Marlon is. “Of course. They’re one of the largest employers on the East Coast. And as I recall, their Main is a general in our army. But aren’t they from New York?”

“Was,” Coombs corrects. “Not anymore. General Williams is called General Hartley-Williams these days and has broken off from the Williams pack to lead her own. Thankfully. The more unrest there is in the dominant packs, the better it is for us. And no. Their company’s headquarters is located in New York but they aren’t. It gave me a fright when that book came out because it’s written by a member of that pack. Had his opinions stood for all of them, we would be in trouble. But when I had him checked out I was relieved to find that he’s the black sheep of the family. A Juvie with long hair and makeup who spends his time drinking, doing drugs and dancing, wasting away his talents. Not much to worry about unless we start seeing him by his Patriarch’s side.”

“This book was written by a Juvie?”

“Incredible isn’t it? It such a shame he’s a rascal. Or would be a shame, had he been a Conservative.”

“So why did this book worry you so much?”

“Because, my dear James, young Mr Williams has a talent he shares with Cabot. This book is merely a radical history book but it’s telling its stories in such a riveting way, romanticizing Packrunning without being untruthful of its backsides. When you read it you’ll feel your heart yearn for the olden days before our own ideology spread. He describes historical events in a way that makes you feel like you know the people involved. Like you were there. You empathize with these historical figures like you’d do when reading well written fictional novels. And that’s dangerous in the hands of the simple-minded. Granted, his language is sometimes youthful and… lacking refinement. But lest you are a literature connoisseur like you and me, you would not notice. In the hands of a literate majority, this could easily have turned into vade mecum.”

“I hardly think a vast majority would carry around a history book on their person,” Marlon says and makes his mouth form an amused smile while he’s trying to calm down.

“Perhaps not. But only because it’s marketed as such. He’d shown a great improvement from his first book and I’d expected more to come from him but to my great relief he seems to have given up on writing.”

“If his first one wasn’t good, why is it on this shelf?”

Coombs chuckles. “Oh, no, you misunderstand. He’d developed his storytelling skills, the first one wasn’t bad. Most of the first one wasn’t his writing either. It’s a collection of letters and diaries from another pack that he has written commentary to that binds them together. It’s a quite exciting read for someone like us who love to learn about life in the past. But again, it presents Packrunning as a tempting option to walking in the light of the One.” He gestures at the whole bookshelf. “All of these might sway people not to follow the One. If you want a look into the minds of our adversaries, you should read them.”

Marlon puts his book back. “I will. But today I was in the mood for something a little more lighthearted, which is why I sought out the west wing, to begin with. These all make me ill at ease.”

“Understandably,” Coombs says with a warm smile. “If it’s light-hearted you’re after, can I persuade you to accompany me at a picnic by the lake instead or reading?”

Marlon smiles in return and teeths his canines. “It would be an honour.”

* * *

The sun is hot and pleasant. Marlon’s sitting up beside Coombs who’s lying on the big blanket by the private lake where swans and ducks swim peacefully. Belly full and thirst sated Marlon’s lost in thought. Mostly about whether Coombs is playing him or if he’s just being paranoid. It’s silent aside from birds singing and insects occasionally buzzing past.

Coombs opens his eyes and turns his head to look at him. “You seem far away. Is anything bothering you?”

“No Mr Coombs. I was merely pondering. Maybe you can solve the puzzle for me? We’re called Conservatives but in the scripture, we’re only mentioned as such in the standard prayers,” Marlon answers, berating himself for letting his mood show, and picking a question at random.

Coombs hums lazily. “I am a humble Conservative. I follow the guiding light of you, the One true god, in my deeds. I pledge my heart and soul to you, in hopes you’ll absolve me from my shortcomings and sins. I pray to you…” he quotes. It’s the start of one of the official prayers. You’re supposed to follow it up with your own words and then end it the same way it began. You don’t have to use those prayers. You could phrase your pledge any way you wanted to and pray silently or out loud as you pleased unless you’re a follower of one of the more rigid versions of the scripture. The prayers have been part of the scripture since the version after the Napa County version, after the scripture changed into its more embellished state. “So what is it that puzzles you?”

“Since Packrunning is the original way of life… what exactly do we seek to conserve?”

Coombs bursts out laughing with a strong burst of happiness. “Why, the Packrunning lifestyle, of course. Isn’t it a marvellous irony?”

Marlon chuckles and nods with a little knot in his stomach that thankfully doesn’t translate to his scent.

“In all the original scriptures that are in Cyrillic, this is stated. It got lost in translation. The Mikhailovs wrote ‘To preserve our culture in the face of the unbeatable foe that seeks to destroy us…’ They talk about how to keep running in a pack amongst the Unionites while avoiding discovery, dividing living arrangements and shedding the pack bond and scent markings while still acting as a pack. They end by writing ‘To ensure the old ways live on we must become stealthy conservatives of our culture. Guided by the light of the Star, Vladimir the Red-Eyed and Jelena Mikhailov’. They didn’t mean it as a name for followers of the faith. But as time progressed, it’s what it came to mean. Back then it was common to sign letters with a phrase that revealed who you honoured as your pack god. But in the next preserved version it’s clear that whoever read the first letter interpreted it as if our god had spoken directly to Vladimir. ‘The red-eyed Alpha was chosen by the Star to guide us.’ The writer is unknown, but with those words, he drastically changed how the scripture would come to look.”

Marlon frowns. “You don’t think red-eyed Alphas are the chosen ones?”

“Of course, I do.”

“That’s always bothered me. The only known red-eyes of today are _Packrunners_ ,” Marlon says, spitting out the last word with contempt. “Why on earth would God choose to bestow such a gift on them and not on devout worshippers of his light?”

“Ah, but you forget, dear friend, that just because someone’s been blessed by His mark doesn’t mean he has to be tacky and flaunt it. The key word here is ‘known’. There might be many out there with the gift but not all make it to the front page of papers nationwide. There might even be Progs that go through life never knowing they’ve been touched by the divine because they’ve never flared. When He gifts an Alpha with red eyes he makes a gamble on a kit that may grow up to honour him or wander forever lost,” Coombs says with a playful twinkle in his eyes.

Marlon grunts. “Perhaps you’re right.” He scoots down on the blanket, turns his back to Coombs and lays down with his head on Coombs’ belly. “Tell me if this is a burden to you. I don’t wish to cause discomfort.”

Coombs closes his eyes with a small smile and reaches out to touch Marlon’s hair lightly. “It’s quite alright. You stay still if that brings you enjoyment.”

Marlon closes his eyes. “In that case, I shall enjoy…”

Coombs chuckles but doesn't answer. His hand remains in Marlon's hair, fingers lightly exploring. Then Marlon feels fingertips trail onto skin, grazing temple, jaw and throat. Marlon shivers, getting goose pimples on his arms and neck while his glands start over-producing secretion.

Coombs' hand disappears so Marlon opens his eyes, side-eyeing Coombs to see him rub his face and neck with Marlon’s secretion on his fingers. Marlon closes his eyes and purrs a content all-is-well. Coombs hasn’t remarked on the strong friendship bond in Marlon’s scent that had sprung to life when Marlon self-pleasured with Coombs’ secretion. But this at least shows Coombs doesn’t want it to be one-sided.

When Marlon wakes up it is to a hint of pain in the air. The sun has moved significantly over the sky. “Sir, I told you to inform me if my position caused you discomfort,” Marlon complains.

Coombs chuckles. “You purr in your sleep. My heart could not take the thought of disturbing your rest, knowing how scarce it is for you and hearing how much pleasure it was giving you. Just like my heart cannot dislodge Gupta when he lies down to purr on a book I’m trying to read, or deny Barry a couple of morsels from my plate when he sits by my feet with eyes that tell tales of starvation.”

Marlon huffs in amusement. “With all due respect, Mr Coombs, your dog is _fat_ and has never known starvation.”

Coombs sniggers. “True words. But he is an accomplished liar and I fall for it every time.”

Marlon grins and sits up shaking his head. The animals on the estate are all spoiled rotten. Without asking for permission Marlon scoops Coombs up and carries him to his wheelchair. His nap on Coombs’ belly is what ultimately caused Coombs to suffer so he thinks he’s entitled. His nose tells him that Coombs has kept marking himself up with Marlon’s secretion until the beginnings of a friendship bond started to form. Marlon withholds a purr but his scent gives away how content that makes him.

* * *

Marlon has dreams about him. About attaching himself to Coombs’ neck gland to siphon, tasting, kissing, exploring with his hands. He even dreams about getting knotted. That's startling. He thinks it's because he fingered himself and found pleasure in it. Awake and alone he thinks about putting Coombs’ penis in his mouth. He vividly imagines tender lovemaking as well as ‘getting fucked into the mattress’ as Sean would put it.

He thinks a lot about Coombs. Of their talks. Coombs talked about the politics and power struggles that are part of everything - science, history, art, religion, biology. He knows a lot about Packrunning since it's the root of their faith and has shaped the world so much. When he talks about history it's in a cohesive fashion that takes into account all three designations. Coombs reveals that he's persuaded several universities to create a course in social biology and it's currently being worked out what exactly it will entail. Jed's always said that biology and history go hand in hand but it’s when Coombs talk about it it starts being interesting. Oh, and technology. Progressives are aptly named in that department. Packrunners and Primals are basic. Why make tools when you have them built in? Why invent the phone when you can stand on a rooftop and use a certain sound that will be heard for miles, that will be repeated by other Packrunners in the outskirts of the call to travel further? Progressives, on the other hand, the Unionists, in particular, started creating things to make up for their lost senses. Humans as a group are smart and adaptive so no matter their designation when they discovered the technology of the Progressives they adopted and furthered it. With the ease you could preserve and spread knowledge today technology is no longer the strict domain of Progs, but they started it. Heck, you could see the difference today still if you’d drop a stunted Prog and a Primal with strong shifting abilities in the middle of a forest. The Prog would start building shelter and create tools and build a fire, while the Primal would pelt, hunt with claws and fangs, and eat food raw. It’s first when a Primal bumps into a problem she can’t solve with her innate abilities that she starts getting creative. Problems, for instance, like a war with an invasive species with superior technology. Because Coombs definitely sees the original Unionites as another species of humankind. He thinks another factor of their swifter advancement is their quick breeding and shorter lives. More minds to work on a problem with fresh eyes. He admits that the longer lives of a Primal (in these discussions he will lump together any designation with shifting abilities as Primals) allows for a scientist to dedicate many more years to solve a puzzle. But he thinks that might be as much a blessing as a curse. “If there was a way to deliver all the knowledge into every household of every baseborn and aristocrat alike with the snap of a finger, you’d find that complex problems would be solved quickly. I both dream of and fear a time when such a library-machine isinvented.” Coombs might fear it due to how much harder it would be to control the way people think, but Marlon hopes he’ll live to see something like that.

Every day Marlon’s faced by the same problem - what to wear. He has a number of suits in his wardrobe. They’re of a different cut than Jed (and as such, Marlon) prefers. He also has white- and black tie dress code suits as well as officer uniforms that come with the military background his alias has. (Has to have, or his many scars would be hard to explain since aristocratic Conservatives don’t have them lest they’re soldiers.) The suits all look like some kind of Conservative aristocrat uniforms to Marlon and he hates them but thinks his alias would be comfortable in them. After a lot of deliberation, he has started to wear his parade uniform more and more often. It sets him apart from Coombs without putting the two of them in competition.

Today he’s infinitely glad he chose the uniform because when he gets to the dining room to have lunch there’s a stranger in there who’s also in uniform sitting beside Coombs. Or barely in uniform. The younger man has removed the red coat and the white undershirt is unbuttoned down to the navel, its sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He’s sitting leaned back with a leg hooked over the armrest of the chair and a glass of wine held dangling between his legs. It takes one look for Marlon to discern that the two of them are lovers. He’s certain of it. He was unsure if Coombs wanted to cross that line with another Alpha until now. Coombs already has. It’s in the way they’re looking at each other, the way the stranger smirks seductively and Coombs dimpled return smile. The stranger is about Marlon’s age, perhaps a few years older, but younger than Marlon’s alias. He smells good and might be one of the prettiest men Marlon’s ever seen. Any Prog would be mooning their eyes out at him. Coombs is a good looking man but not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as the stranger. However, the stranger has curly hair hooked behind his ears and it’s nearly long enough to brush his shoulders. As an officer, that’s unacceptable. Marlon can’t see any scars either. None of the hands, face, or chest. He should at the very least have scars on his hands if he’d been any kind of ‘real’ fighter. 

Marlon’s alias has gone to one of the military academies where you were trained to be an officer while getting a college education. If you’re rich enough your results in the military training won’t matter much beyond handling the basics. He’s heard Luci and Mike complain about ‘the West Point boys’ back in the day. It’s an unfair complaint since most of the cadets get in on merit and skill and only a handful through corruption. Marlon and the stranger are supposedly in the category that has and who automatically graduate as officers into the reserve. Basically, scum who gets to schmooze around in the uniform without having to get near the front. Sean had picked their background as graduates from one of these schools because it was a status symbol amongst wealthy Conservatives that explained their scars and since he had contacts that could make sure the paperwork held up. It’s easy for Marlon to forget that their pack isn’t just out there doing their own thing. His grandma _is_ a general. Sean received actual training from American agents during the time he was isolated to get his bonds to fade.

Marlon hates the stranger.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Marlon says and strolls inside.

“Ah. James. May I introduce you to a friend of mine. He dropped by for a surprise visit,” Coombs says and turns his chair to face Marlon. He smells happy. Marlon barely refrains from sneering. “This is Carter Wadsworth. Carter, this is James Carhartt, the man I was telling you about.”

Carter puts the glass of wine on the table and stands up to shake Marlon’s hand. “Carter,” he says, smiling with perfect teeth. His grip is firm but his hand is soft, a lot softer than Marlon’s own. A quick look at the epaulettes of the jacket hanging on his chair shows he is one rank below Marlon.

“Carhartt,” Marlon replies, not granting him the right to call Marlon by his first name.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Carter grins and sits down again, smelling his palm just like Marlon’s doing. “That’s fair. Rumour has it that despite your penchant for drinking and flirting, you still had a lot higher performance grades than I did.”

“Which you freely admit? How… _charming_ ,” Marlon says with a tone that replaces the meaning of the last word with ‘dumb’.

Carter chuckles, eyes getting sharp for a beat as he sits back down. He’s smart enough to recognise the insult. “I think we’ve met before? We went to the same academy. I think you were still there the first year i was there.” Sean had told him that people might ‘recognize’ him despite never having met. He’d planted the rumours and once they got picked up there would be people that swore they knew him despite never having met him. Since Marlon’s been fairly isolated since he came here, it’s the first time it’s happened to him.

Marlon sits down opposite of the pair and inclines his head briefly. “I cannot recall it but shan't say that it isn’t possible. I’m not good at memorizing people lest they have something of substance inside of them.” He reaches for the wine bottle and pours himself a glass. “Even if they are extraordinarily fair on the eyes,” he adds with a tight little lopsided smile and holds up his glass in a toast. “So what brings you here? Your parents withdrew your allowance?”

Carter tenses up and Coombs chokes a little on his own wine, anxiety in his scent. Carter isn’t anxious. There’s a tendril of annoyance paired with a fake smile. “Perhaps. Sullivan is known to me for his generosity. Besides, I return the generosity. I give him something in return he couldn't get otherwise considering he’s a cripple.”

Marlon has to struggle not to bristle. Those are fighting words. He keeps himself as civilized as he can as they speak throughout the meal. If circumstances hadn’t been what they were, if Carter had been raised as a Packrunner, then maybe Marlon could have liked him a little. Carter has an easy smile, a lot of self-confidence and a boyish charm. If he had been a Packrunner he wouldn’t see Coombs as a cripple but as a brilliant man. He’d have known Coombs would be a welcome addition to any pack and would be able to get laid without any problem at all. Heck, if he’d been a Packrunner they’d be having this lunch outside since he wouldn’t be allowed to set foot inside. But he isn’t, and it’s a problem. It’s a problem because he’s trespassing on Marlon’s territory that isn’t actually his but feels like it. And it’s a problem because he refers to Coombs as a cripple and even as invalid several times during the meal while calling Coombs by his first name. All while Marlon keeps jabbing semi-polite poison at Carter for not having the decency to understand what a wonderful, brilliant and remarkable man Coombs is.

It makes Marlon think. He’d been so certain he could do what Sean did. Act, fit in anywhere, disregarding himself and his needs. Less than an hour in this situation and he knows it isn’t true. He _can’t_. He has no claim to this house or to Coombs so to keep playing his part and stay here he’d have to humiliate himself by being nice to Coombs’ other guest and then withdraw so they could have sex despite the disrespect Carter’s showing.

“So, James―”

Marlon’s icy warning growl makes Carter blink in surprise. “It’s Mr Carhartt or Sir to you,” Marlon says holding Carter’s gaze. He’s not sure what Carter sees in him but he can smell the first hint of anxiety in his scent and he licks his lips in surprised submission. Poor Coombs is bathing in anxiety and distress. Carter might have remained unaffected by the hostility (but not unaware of it) but Coombs hasn’t. He’s kept smiling and talking, as friendly and polite as always. But underneath it, the hostility between his two boys is stressing him the heck out. 

Marlon stands up. “I think it’s time for me to say thank you for the hospitality, Mr Coombs. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be graced with your company and vast knowledge. But I’m afraid my reputation is tarnished for a reason. So I will take my leave now rather than stay and perhaps commit an act that might be ruinous to the friendship we’ve built. Thank you, Mr Coombs, and goodbye,” he says and bows graciously towards his stunned host. He stands up straight, gives Carter a contemptuous look and turns to walk to his quarters.

He packs his bags, calls a servant to get him a car and to take the bags outside, then strides to the entrance.

Coombs is sitting in the foyer with a worried look on his face, stinking of distress. “Are you really leaving, James?” The way he's sitting in his wheelchair… It’s the first time Marlon’s seen him sit shrunken in on himself leaning a bit to the side actually looking like his disability hampers him. Coombs normally sits in his wheelchair like he’s sitting on a throne or at the very least a normal chair.

Marlon takes a deep breath trying to tamper down the _no no no_ feeling inside of him. “Sir? You bade me to make myself at home. I’m afraid I did that a little too well. This feels like my home and today has been a sharp reminder that it isn’t. I have no claim to your attention nor your property. If I had, I would throw that pretty young man out the door head-first without opening it first. As the matter stands, you’d take offense to an assault to your other guest. I cannot dictate who is allowed to be here. All I can dictate, is myself. I have integrity and will not compete for scraps with vacant minded fools who do not know the true value of being in your presence.”

Carter appears in the doorway to the salon and leans his shoulder against the doorpost. “Oh come now. There’s enough of Sullivan for both of us. You don’t have to storm out like a jealous Maybella,” he says with an amused smirk.

Marlon sneers. He flares and teeths his canines, looking at Carter with utter contempt. “You are a disgrace to the uniform. A disgrace to the military and a disgrace to the faith. You come here to drop your pants and be paid to do so. Nothing but a simple _whore_. You need money? You could just as easily get a job as a model. Progressive magazines would fall all over themselves to put you on their cover and you’d soon have a following of fans and make a fortune just for being beautiful. I’m not denying that you are. You’re easily one of the prettiest men I’ve ever come across. But that’s all you are. _Aesthetics._ Your presence in this house could easily be replaced with a hand and a painting. The rest of you is useless. Not even your muscle tone serve a purpose aside from being pleasing to the eye.”

Carter’s amused smirk melts away during Marlon’s vitriolic rant. “A whore, am I? Like you’re not? The way Sullivan speaks of you, you must be fucking like dogs. You’re giving it up to a cripple same as me. So get off that high horse. I heard of you at the academy. You were out drinking and fucking around with Primals and Packrunning garbage. And you think that you can look down on me because you’ve _found the light_ or whatever excuse you make for yourself? Pathetic. I know an ordinary, basic jealousy fit when I see one.”

Marlon couldn’t have stood straighter even if you’d have shoved a rod up his ass. “I was out flirting. I enjoy a good game of courtship even if I don’t follow it up with my knot. And you’re lucky we’re not in private. I’m hampered by the code of conduct or you’d be rudely made aware exactly how uselessly you’ve trained your muscles while you shaped them in vanity. Please refrain from calling Mr Coombs a cripple or I might forget myself and give you a demonstration as to why the academy found me well suited for war.”

Carter laughs and saunters slowly in Marlon’s direction. “You’re threatening me? You really think a body like mine comes into being without being in good shape? We are in private. What’s holding you back?”

“We are not. We are guests in the presence of our host.” Marlon’s boiling on the inside. “According both to the military code and the scripture we should act in a gentlemanly fashion. Although, I should be reprimanding you for how you disgrace your uniform. While you're wearing it you represent the United States military and all the men and women dedicating their lives in our defence.”

"You're talking about that extra stripe on your shoulder as if you didn't get into the academy through bribery same as me. I―” Carter’s getting up in Marlon’s face with a far too arrogant expression.

Marlon moves like a snake. One fast hit to the solar plexus sends Carter chipping for air on the floor. “Get up, soldier! On the ground you're dead. Don't lie there to wait for medical assistance as if you fell off your horse on your estate. Submission will not save you from a Unionite. _Get up!_ ” Marlon stands over Carter like a drill sergeant. He might not have gone to West Point or any of the other four academies but this is familiar. He can almost feel Luci stand over him as a kit, yelling at him to add the element of stress to the lesson. Michael wasn't so harsh in words but would hit much harder.

Coombs has remained sitting shrunk in on himself with his head bowed and face averted the whole time. He's watching them through the corners of his unhappy eyes. He isn't licking his lips which is good. He's the dominant male in the room and it's Carter's refusal to acknowledge that that sparked this argument in the first place.

To Carter's credit, he scrambles to his feet before he's found his breath. He attacks Marlon with fisted punches towards the face that Marlon deflects. The next volley of punches goes against his belly and solar plexus. Marlon keeps his arms up leaving himself open to be hit while tensing his diaphragm and stomach muscles, testing Carter. Carter's technique tells him Carter is a boxer (the way his muscles look shows him as out of practice). He hits _hard_. It hurts and if Marlon hadn't been used to ignoring pain he might have folded. Thing is, Carter's knuckles are beautiful and unharmed with their pretty valleys and hills intact like someone who's used to punch with padded protective gloves. If you hit something hard with bare knuckles it's painful. Your knuckles will hurt and might even break. It might incapacitate you. Marlon's knuckles have broken many times and healed up flatter and rougher each time. He can smell the pain from Carter's hands with each hit. Neither of the two let their faces show what their scent reveals.

Carter throws another punch at his head. Marlon blocks. He takes a moment to appreciate that Carter might actually be a brilliant boxer. Then he fists his hand and throws a punch against Carter's head. As expected Carter holds up his guard but instead of punching Marlon extends his claws and scratches deep gorges in Carter's forearm. Carter hisses, eyes widening in surprise and in that heartbeat of distraction Marlon jabs his other clawed hand in to grab Carter's throat. Carter freezes and licks his lips in submission, distress spiking in his scent.

“You think I got my extra stripe by letting my parents pay more? Think again. Nobody sits around at the academy and comes out with a higher rank.”

"Sullivan did.”

Marlon drops fangs and roars in Carter's face to hide his surprise. Carter closes his eyes and lifts his chin up to give Marlon better access to the potentially deadly clawed grip on his throat. In response Marlon lightens up on the pressure. “You will refer to him as Mr Coombs while in my presence, soldier."

“Yes, Sir."

“You mock me for fraternizing with Packrunning trash, but what you fail to realize is that they grow up training for war. Packrunners are vastly over-represented in the forces. Their misguided and uncivilized culture is a violent one and they'll respect no leader who hasn't earned their title. If you're sent to the front you'll soon realize that they're eager to teach you a lesson the academy missed.”

"And what is that, Sir?”

Marlon lets go and Carter stands to attention, gaze locked at a point behind Marlon. “Friendly fire, _isn't_ ," Marlon answers pointedly. “In the future, when you wear the uniform you'll wear it according to standard. You'll act like an officer and be properly deferential to any superior. If you want to act like a buffoon you'll wear civilian clothes. Is that understood?”

"Yes, Sir.”

Marlon's still flaring, fangs fully dropped. He dulls the light of his shine and turns away. “I shall take my leave then."

“ _Stay_."

Coombs hasn't moved. He's still shrunk in on himself, averting his face reeking of distress but the word is uttered as an order bolting Marlon to the ground.

“Carter, please leave. Jeeves will drive you wherever you want to go. Miranda will bring your jacket and a first aid kit. She'll accompany you to to your destination and see to your wounds in the car.”

"Yes, Mr Coombs.” Carter bows to Coombs, makes a salute to Marlon and hastens out the door. Jeeves who'd been standing in the next room follows Carter out and soon after Miranda comes jogging with a bag and Carter's red coat also having been within hearing distance. Marlon and Coombs hold their positions until they're alone.

Marlon waits. 

And waits.

“How far… how far have I fallen?” Coombs asks at last. "How much have I disgraced myself in your eyes?”

Marlon turns around and finds Coombs still shrunken with his face averted. “For what? Letting someone far inferior call you invalid? Or for knowing the pleasure of another person's touch?”

"There are…” Coombs hesitates, "people, that will… make wrongful assumptions about you based on your presence here. It would have been the honourable thing to do, to warn you.” Coombs shifts his gaze to look guardedly at Marlon without moving his head. “But I didn't want to lest it would make you have second thoughts about taking me up on my invite.”

"Assumptions? Like Carter's? That our relationship is of the lustful variety?”

"Yes.”

Marlon scoffs. "People already make a lot of wrongful assumptions about me. One more won't make a difference.” He lifts his head to look at the grand painting on the wall. Today he knows it's a painting of Vladimir Mikhailov, the true founder of the faith. Long black hair, a handsome flat, round face with slitted red eyes. He's atop a shaggy pony, both proud in posture. The pair is indistinguishable from the Volkov pack in looks. “Not all assumptions about me are untrue," Marlon admits. "I too have committed acts considered to be sinful by my peers. I've known the gratification of the flesh. With an Omega I had no intention to mate, no less. Granted, it was his designation that stopped me from pursuing a mateship with him. He was a Packrunner.”

"He?” Coombs turns his head to look at him.

Marlon chuckles dryly. “A penis does not equal an Alpha, Sir." 

"I'm well aware. I'm merely curious if his sex had any bearing on your choice to divert from the dictations of the scripture?”

Marlon pauses before answering. "Alas, no. I’m an equal opportunist in that department. Sex nor gender has no bearing on my libido. To get a rise out of me I require mental stimulation. Packrunner or not, he had me enchanted by his inner strength and intelligence. I’ll give you another confession. I do not believe in truemates as described by the scripture I grew up with. I find the notion of one individual designed and born purely to be my assigned mate downright appalling. I do, however, believe in truemates interpreted as someone that I can love and stay true to for as long as I live. Someone matched to me in spirit and nature, not by divine decree and creation but through their own right. I believe there are many people out there that would match the criteria, but once I’ve mated one, I shall have no need for anyone else.”

The distress in Coombs’ scent finally starts receding. He turns the chair to more fully face Marlon. “You use the word ‘people’ rather than ‘Omegas’,” Coombs states.

Marlon’s only answer is a slight upward quirk in the corner of his lips.

Coombs interprets his silence exactly like Marlon wants him to. With hope. “Say, James… If you don’t believe our god created truemates for us… does that mean you don’t believe red-eyed Alphas as chosen ones either?”

“Of course, I do. Why do you think it irks me so much that the Packrunners have two on their side and we’ve got none?”

Coombs smiles with an excited look in his eyes. He bites his lip and then - flares.

Marlon takes a short, surprised breath and stares in wonder. Coombs’ eyes are red. Not the dark red of blood like his own family’s red-eyes, but clear red like a poppy in bloom. For a stunned moment he’s not sure how he’s supposed to react. Then he drops to his knees and puts his hands on Coombs’ knees to gaze up at him adoringly. “Why have you withheld that I'm in the presence of a chosen one? Or a better question, why do you let men like Carter call you invalid and a cripple when you are, in fact, touched by the light?”

“He's not as bad as you made him out to be, James.” Which probably is true. Carter might not have appeared to be as much of an ass if Marlon hadn't been so hostile. The general demeanor he’d shown towards both Marlon and the servants that waited upon them, was friendly and forgiving until the very end when Marlon left. “And he isn't wrong. I'm a cripple. As for 'invalid’, I've made that my weapon. I gain power over people because they don’t see me as a threat to them. It puts me in control and if things go sideways they take the hit for it while I get off scot-free. If people see me as only my mode of transportation it’s to my advantage.”

“That may be, but in your own home no guest should be allowed to show you such disrespect. Especially if all they’ve got to offer in return is basic licentiousness.”

Coombs’ makes a face of frustration. “Please, do not judge me so harshly for having urges. I beg of you not to end our friendship over it.”

Marlon huffs. “Judge you? Were you not listening to my argument with Carter? Because _he_ recognised a jealousy fit when he saw one.” He chuckles at Coombs’ eyebrows raising in surprise. “That could not possibly come as a surprise to you especially since after I gave you the massage. My arousal was as plain as yours.”

Coombs laughs a little awkwardly and looks away, this time with a little smile playing on his lips and happiness in his scent. “You’d be surprised how many Alphas out there like toeing the line but take offense if you try to step over it.”

“It’s exactly what was holding me back, Mr Coombs. You left me with the full responsibility to gauge your level of consent. As someone whose body will react to sexual advances even when the mind is unwilling, I will not push unless I’m met with blatant enthusiasm. In addition to that, you hold the power. I’m a guest in your house and stepping over the proverbial line in the sand might get me uninvited all too quickly. It feels like we have too much to talk about to risk it. Even if you appeared… receptive.”

Coombs looks back to him with a dimpled smirk, red eyes glowing brighter. “James, please take the liberties you want.”

Marlon swallows and meets Coombs gaze. Coombs bites his lip in anticipation. The liberties he _wants_. Marlon’s heart is suddenly hammering. He drags his hands up Coombs’ thighs then pushes himself up to scent along Coombs’ jawline and down to his throat. He finds the gland and closes his lips around it, licking with his tongue. Coombs shivers and cups the back of Marlon’s neck to keep him there. Marlon nips lightly down his neck and bites his shoulder a little harder a couple of times demandingly.

Coombs lets out a half-laugh breath, nails scraping against Marlon’s scalp. “My servants… I’m certain they know but I usually don’t do it where they might walk in… Your choice.”

Marlon doesn’t even break his stride before he scoops Coombs up and sets course for Coombs’ bedroom. “East wing, right?”

* * *

In the bedroom Coombs isn’t nearly as passive as in the rest of the house. They help each other undress, biting, sucking on leaking glands, letting hands wander. They end up on the bed, Coombs half sitting against the padded headboard with Marlon straddling him, the tantalizing scent of arousal thick in the air. Coombs coats his fingers with his own secretion and reaches around Marlon to finger his asshole. Instinctively, Marlon tenses up.

“Are you going to be a good boy and let me knot you?” Coombs purrs into his ear.

"Yes to the second question and no to the first. The world doesn't change shape and bend to the will of good boys.”

Coombs laughs with a burst of happiness and breaches Marlon's asshole with the tip of his finger only to pull out again and get more of his own neck secretion. “Don’t worry. We’ll take our time preparing you like in the old days, before faux-slick was invented. Did you know that the invention of faux-slick changed how we look at recreational Alpha-Alpha sex? Back in the days it was thought of as a drawn out affair since it takes time to get enough lubrication with only secretion from neck glands. In modern times it’s more commonly described as a rushed, violent and rough act. Although, in most depictions I’ve read of rank-establishing sex between equals in a pack, especially if one Alpha is a new member, seems to be an exception. Most depict fighting that goes on until one of the Alphas submits and the winner goes on to knot the loser using mostly saliva as lubricant and barely taking any time to properly opening him up. It’s been puzzling to me since it’s never described as an overly painful event.”

Marlon chuckles. Both because of Coombs defaulting to a lecturing mode (Marlon doesn’t mind that at all. He likes that about Coombs. Mostly because he has things of substance to lecture about.) and because Coombs has just told him how to relax enough to let this happen. “I don’t understand how it can be puzzling to you when there’s a perfect description of why that is, in the Napa County scripture,” he says. Coombs gives him a quizzical look. “I take it you’ve never siphoned during sex, Mr Coombs?” Marlon asks with a smirk.

“Please, call me Finn. And, no, I haven’t.”

“Finn?” Marlon doesn’t connect how Sullivan would translate to Finn. But on the other hand, many of his friends in the slums have nicknames that in no way relate to their birth-given names so he doesn’t stop to think about it seeing as he currently has a finger in his ass and is about to take a knot properly for the first time. “Very well. The answer is in the section about cementing friendship bonds, Finn. We’ll siphon each other and you will understand.”

* * *

Marlon’s never been hit by a siphon high that hard before and Coombs, _Finn_ , is delighted to discover how well a siphon high masks pain. He still smells of it. Sex is within the realm of activities that causes Finn a considerable amount of pain. But just like a pretty smell could distract someone as uninterested of Os as Phillip to wander off and ‘get stuck’, (‘It’s awful. Don’t do it,’ would probably have been good advice to adhere to, but Marlon’s far to swept up to stop to think.) it can make Finn’s knot do the thinking for him and his knot cares nothing about pain. The moment Marlon siphons and Finn follows his lead it turns into textbook bonding sex. Marlon turns docile and drugged while uncharacteristic aggression flares up in Finn. After Finn’s knot has died he’s completely lax and Marlon rolls them over to enter Finn and to thrust lazily until he too has come inside of Finn. Once they recuperate from that they stay in bed making love, fucking like dogs, and making more love. They keep siphoning each other. The completely dazed and trancelike state wears off eventually and fades into a relaxed high that still works to dull out Finn’s pain to a manageable level. But he doesn’t have the same stamina as Marlon. So Marlon gets to discover that he likes to suck penis - he loves the pleasure it brings Finn and he swallows each load as if he’s starving and semen is the only thing he can eat. He discovers that riding is a killer for the thighs - the Volkovs teaching him their squat-kick dance is a blessing. Being knotted truly isn’t his thing. He recognises this even though at the same time he can’t get enough. Finn literally can’t be close enough. He wants more. Closer. Finn has no hang ups about what he’s willing to let Marlon do to his body. He even lets Marlon knot his mouth when they’re lying in a 69 position. But Finn, as it turns out, has kinks and definite turn-ons.

“Tell me you want me to fuck you," Finn urges.

The word 'fuck’ is still foreign on Marlon's tongue. “Please. Fuck me, Sir," he begs obligingly.

“No, no, no. Not 'Sir’. Finn. Call me Finn. Tell me you want me.”

"Please, Finn, fuck me. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me! I want you so bad, please let me have it!” 

Finn likes dirty talk. He wants verbal confirmation. He doesn't want deferral at all, only enthusiastic greed. Calling him by title makes him ill at ease. He yearns for a relationship of equal standing. He's mostly about giving and taking. He likes the words fuck, cock, Alpha, and knot. If Marlon calls him Alpha it drives him nuts but he'll instantly call Marlon Alpha right back - again with the verbal confirmation. It's important to him that both of them are truly into the Alpha-Alpha thing. Marlon wonders if previous lovers have tried to pretend they're having sex with an Omega.

So Finn isn't into unequal power dynamics. But his body's limitations make for positions that demand it. Of course, only Marlon interprets it as such. Just like Keith never sees it as anything but equal when he's on the floor between Marlon's legs sucking him off Finn doesn't see Marlon as deferential when Marlon lies across his lap while Finn fucks him with his fingers. But Marlon does.

They emerge only to eat before going back to Finn's bedroom. Marlon falls asleep with Finn wrapped around him, both sated and exhausted, both so wrapped in each other's scent you can barely tell them apart.

Marlon hasn't slept that well for ages.

When he wakes up and comes back to bed after having relieved himself Finn is blushing, smelling of excitement, arousal and a little bit of anxiety. “James, did you say your morning prayer yet?" he asks tentatively.

"I did not.”

"Would you… could you…” Finn rubs his neck and shifts in discomfort, anxiety and arousal both mounting. “I have this fantasy. I've never dared to ask it of anyone else. I… it's incredibly sinful and I know the light does not approve. But… will you let me fuck you while you say your morning prayer… and perhaps recite the scripture?” he asks and holds his breath.

To Marlon it sounds like a perfect fuck you to the One. He says yes.

It becomes standard fare in their sex life since _nothing_ can get Finn as turned on as that. He gains extra stamina and strength through the sheer arousal that lets him play through the pain. Marlon loves it.

Finn has bookcases in his bedroom too. It's all erotica. Written erotica, lots of comics, photo magazines. They hold every type of pornography and kinks. One of the shelves is glassed in and locked. Marlon wonders about it.

“It's content is so vile it should be burned. Only the mentally deranged would be aroused by those comics. But you know me. I don't discriminate when it comes to the literature I buy. Especially not when it's something so rare.”

"Would you unlock it for me?”

"Naturally.”

Finn unlocks and then sits on the bed watching Marlon with baited breath as Marlon picks one of the comics and flips it up at a random page. It takes one look at the drawn picture of an adult Alpha with his penis deep inside a little kit no older than four for Marlon to drop the magazine as if burned, skunking like an unwilling O.

Finn keels over laughing when Marlon, on pure instinct, bounds over to the opposite side of the room to growl icy murder at the magazine, flaring and fangs dropping unbidden. Finn laughs even more because it takes Marlon roughly 30 minutes to calm down his anger.

Most of the erotica collection isn't that vile. There are a few works of truly questionable nature; Alpha/Omega sibling or parent/offspring incest for example. But they still depict consenting adults. There's beastiality, but presented in such a way that it more feels like someone took the shifting kink to the extreme. There's porn depicting forced knottings too. But the Os aren't skunking or looking very unwilling at all.

“It is a common fantasy amongst the ultra Conservative. Over on that shelf you have ones that depict Os tying Alphas up and forcing them to knot the Os instead. The psychology behind it is that it removes the responsibility of keeping true to the scripture from the one fantasising about it. It's not a matter of wanting to cause harm to others. Nobody _wants_ to be forced. And in a fantasy, no matter what is done to you, you’re always in control since you’re controlling the fantasy itself,” Finn says.

It makes sense when Marlon thinks about it. It puts _all_ the types of erotica in another perspective for him. Even if he thinks the kitty porn should be burned and its creators tortured until death, drawn images or not.

There are comics that make him want to laugh out loud and make commentary to Finn about how wildly inaccurate they are. One such series is called ‘Pack Life’ and in that pack everything seems to be one large orgy all the time. They have wild sex everywhere while the kits run around minding their own business and somehow things get done anyway. He wonders about the designation of the artist - if it’s just a Packrunner who happened to be horny that drew it, or if it’s a repressed Conservative who thinks that’s what pack life is like.

He finds books and comics that feel like fantasies tailored to him specifically except he’s never truly thought about any of these things. He sits naked on the floor with his legs folded underneath himself and reads them. In a way, they describe the very opposite of Aiden’s description of his ideal mate. Aiden wants someone acting demure like a Conservative, who’ll reveal herself to be a force of nature once you get to know her. These comics (there are books too, but he likes the visual presentation of the comics more than he likes photos or writing) show these feisty, powerful Omegas and Alphas that turn submissive in private. No less brilliant and excellent. No, just like Keith did when he chose to sit between Marlon’s legs to give him his very first blowjob, these dominant and awestriking individuals _choose_ to submit to their partner. There are elements depicted that don’t really do it for him - whips, paddles, physical punishment that brings the submissive pleasure through enjoyment of the pain. He can relate to that enjoyment only when put into a more feral perspective like when he and Arvid bit and clawed at each other in the heat of passion. The leather costumes some wear he can do without. But the collars? He’s intrigued. Unlike the forced-knotting erotica, these submissives allow themselves to be tied up and chained, used for their master’s pleasure. Consent is the very base that everything in these stories rely upon. Some things are strange. Like the one where the submissive partner crawls around on all fours pretending to be a dog. But when he sits at his master’s feet by the table, getting hand fed, Marlon’s vibrating inside. There’s a scene where a woman sits naked under her boss’ desk with his penis in her mouth, _not_ with the intention of getting him off, but on the contrary she’s supposed to keep him from getting hard.

There’s one scene with the submissive hung up in a similar fashion as Arvid had been the first time Marlon saw him. But this woman gladly offers herself up to the shackles. Marlon skips by the whipping part of this, but when she’s rewarded by a knotting still strung up, Marlon’s rock hard and breathing roughly. Sex holds so much more allure to him in fiction than real life.

The best part of all of these stories is afterwards the dominant partner gets to cuddle and care for the submissive and sometimes they talk it over. Marlon’s having a sexual epiphany of great proportion.

“So you’re into that, huh? Some would regard it as a perversion.”

Marlon jerks to see Finn stand over him, looking over his shoulder at what he’s reading. He blushes hotly, blush spreading all the way down to his chest. “I-I don’t know.”

Finn’s cheeks dimple in amusement. “Oh, but your scent and prominent erection says you are,” he teases.

“This is something new to me. I’ve never… It’s new.” 

“No need to be ashamed. You can tell me.”

Marlon presses his lips together tightly and Finn chuckles. 

“I’m not judging you, James. But I tried those games out once and it took me mere minutes to figure out it wasn’t for me. Having to dominate someone in such intimate setting makes me feel less of a man. Too many people wish to know me purely for my riches and not for myself and being a Dom made me ache inside my chest cavity, as if the only attraction I could ever hold to someone was being born into the ruling class. On the contrary, as a Sub I’d never ever felt so crippled and useless. Growing up I had to suffer a lot of humiliation and abuse from my peers. Kits can be cruel to the defenseless. And put in the position of a Sub I relived the feelings of my youth. My Dom was a very kind man and didn’t ask anything humiliating or extreme of me but my spirit broke very quickly. He was the one to stop the game. I assured him I could go on but he’d have none of it and for that I’m glad. So I suppose my aversion to these games is wholly caused by my disability. But I don’t cast judgement on those for whom this brings joy and pleasure.” He sinks down on the floor behind Marlon and scoots to bracket Marlon with his knees, wrapping his arms around him from behind and putting his chin on Marlon’s shoulder. “But I’m sorry that I cannot be the one to satisfy you if this,” he makes a little nod towards the comic Marlon’s holding, “is what you crave.”

“Nor would I ask you to.”

“But you can ask me if you have fantasies you’d like to bring to life. If they won’t cause me distress I’d be happy to oblige. After all, you’re letting me live out my own long-standing fantasy to mix my faith with carnality in the most blasphemous way. So feel free to ask. Just not… that.” He kisses Marlon’s naked shoulder and snuffles his neck. Marlon shivers. “So tell me, my dear James, what is it in these stories appeals to you? Is it to be locked up in chains?”

Marlon lets out a wordless sputter and scowls. 

Finn laughs with a burst of happy in his scent and kisses his neck. “Not a Sub, I see. So you like to be in control. Yes? Go on. Answer me,” he says with a playful tone and grabs Marlon’s erection with one hand to stroke it.

Marlon closes his eyes. “Yes.”

Finn nibbles his earlobe. The next question is breathed into his ear and makes every hair stand on end. “You like it when people obey you?”

“Yes.”

“Just anyone? No, I don’t think so. My servants’ subservience irks you. I’ve noticed. Pair that with your reaction to Carter not living up to the standard you think an officer’s uniform demands… I think you want submission from the admirable... Isn’t that right, James? You want the people you admire to look to you for direction?” Finn muses between soft bites and kisses.

“Yes,” Marlon breathes.

“Mh. Thought so.” Finn speeds up his deft strokes with a little twist every time he reaches the glans. His other hand travels up to tease a nipple. “You have a tarnished reputation but I’ve seen you. I see you. You hold yourself up to great standards and it bothers you that people don’t see how well you live up to them. What an excellent specimen of humankind you are. But I see it. I see it, James.” He licks at Marlon’s ear gland, each warm breath dancing along sensitive skin. Marlon trembling from restraint. He tips his head back to rest against Finn’s shoulder, leaving him to dictate the pleasure.

“You like to pick things apart and put them back together? You, like that, James? People in particular? Disassemble them and put them back together?”

“I don’t know.”

“Imagine it. Imagine having someone great submit to you so completely that for a moment they let themselves be obliterated, trusting in you to put them back together and make them whole again. Trusting you blindly. Do you like it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Marlon’s voice is hoarse.

“I’ve noted a nurturing side in you as well. You like that part in these comics? Taking care of your Sub afterwards when they’re vulnerable and start wondering if you still respect them?”

“Yes.”

Finn’s hand disappears from his nipple and is lifted up beside Marlon’s head. Marlon frowns but doesn’t open his eyes. The next moment he feels fingers coated with Finn’s secretion against his lips. Sucking them into his mouth and siphoning is reflexive at this point, feeling the hyper-focused lethargic daze take over, furthering his arousal. Finn leans them back slightly to get better leverage. He withdraw his fingers to circle Marlon’s chest and play with his nipple again, his other hand jerking Marlon off even faster. Marlon keeps siphoning, focusing on the pleasure, on Finn’s lips and tongue on his neck, teethed canines scraping against his skin, drawing gasps and shiver from him. Finn’s lips come up to grace the shell of his ear. “Imagine doing all that to a whole country. Disassemble it to remove the bad parts. Obliterate what is to rebuild something better with gentle care. A unified people under one banner. Remove corruption. Let the state take over hospitals, schools, publishers, banks. Raise the living standards by offering free, tax funded healthcare for all. Make school mandatory for everyone and disallow private schools. That way you could make sure everyone learned the same thing. Serve free lunch in school so even the poorest kit could keep their focus to learn to read and write. Get rid of pack wars. Root out the corruption within the police so everyone can walk the streets feeling safe. Get rid of the political corruption. With a good leader we don’t need a bunch of privileged swines that are more concerned with their own riches than to care for their people and who will cowardly put the blame on someone else when they make mistakes. Create a system that makes it possible to have everyone stand equal in front of the law, where everyone is responsible for their own actions. Eradicate homelessness and starvation.” 

Finn keeps painting a picture of utopian society. All Marlon has to do is picture the country as one giant pack to see it. Some of the things Finn talks about would mean his own pack loses a lot of privilege. Limiting what companies that may exist in the private sector and getting rid of corruption. But when Marlon thinks of what these reforms could mean to people like Laurent and Nceba? Free healthcare and education? If the law was governed by principle rather than the pay-to-play system it is now no company would be able to get away with polluting water with poison and Laurent’s pack would not have had to lose so many to EB50. Marlon’s pack would be a tiny bit less privileged but they’d be fine. Only difference would be that the lowest bar for standard of life would be higher than today. “...and hang every Snatcher in the public gallows,” Marlon adds. That’s a murderous thought that brings him nearly as much pleasure as Finn’s hands.

Finn chuckles. “We will do that. Just keep quiet about that around governor Harridan and Michaels for now. We don’t want them to know we’re coming for them before they’ve served their purpose. But do you like it? The idea of picking a country apart and putting it back together, better for everyone?”

“Yes,” Marlon answers with an upward quirk to his lips. He likes that very much. “Now bite me, because I’m about to pop,” he demands. Finn’s teeth dig into his shoulder and he comes for the umpteenth time today.

“I feel a bit ashamed to have admitted to liking those comics,” Marlon admits later when they’re back in bed. “It feels like they don’t match up with my ideals.”

“Would it make you more comfortable if I told you a few things that make me feel ashamed?”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t learn to walk until my Juvies. My parents were delighted when they got me, a red-eyed boy. And when I was born I appeared to be a normal, healthy kitling. But when I got old enough to crawl I simply didn't. And if I tried I started reeking of pain. When I got older just standing up was excruciating. So I didn’t. My parents aren’t bad people. They wanted what’s best for me. But in their desperation they did some awful things, thinking they were helping me. A doctor told them they were coddling me and that they needed to be forceful, as if need would magically cure me. He cited us as a morphic species able to evolve in real-time, which made us superior to all else. As a result there was a period that they took away my wheelchair and instead left me alone to solve my problems. It rendered me unable to get to the toilet to see to my needs. This so called doctor meant that I would learn to walk so I could take care of myself. I did not. Instead, I ended up lying in my own urine and feces more than once, riddled by pain from trying to do something my body was physically unable to do. Unfortunately, one of those times I had been reading outdoors and was seen by a couple of my peers… Kit’s can be mean. And so they were for many years after that.”

“I see nothing in this that should put shame on you. Perhaps on your parents but definitely on the doctor who claimed medical expertise prescribing humiliation as a cure for a physical defect.”

“Indeed. But there is no shame in your enjoyment of the comics either. Emotions are complex and not necessarily logical.”

“True. So how come you can walk today?”

“My family loves me very much and saw that it had the opposite effect as well as it sent my beloved sister and greatest ally at the time, spiralling into depression and regressing into a feral, protective state. So we switched doctor. The new doctor said that you do not teach a one-armed man to clap, you teach him to snap his fingers. When told about the other doctor citing real-time evolution as a reason for his method she was furious and pointed out that evolution also included developing intelligence and the ability to use tools. Something that he, according to her, had failed to evolve to.” Finn sniggers and shares an impish look with Marlon. “It all changed after that. Instead of trying to make me adapt, they tailored the environment to my needs which gave me actual freedom of movement. Plus she gave me exercises to perform to build the muscles in my upper body. The old doctor had been right that I’d been coddled. I’d been carried or wheeled around in my chair by someone else before I saw him. She did not disallow that kind of help, but set up a regime that would permit me to make use of my body that functioned normally in such a way that I didn’t need help. Step by step she also got me to use my legs. She didn’t instantly try to make me walk. It was small things. Curl my toes around a pen, lift my feet one at the time the tiniest bit, things like that. Gradually it stopped hurting and we moved up to more difficult exercises. I could stand up without crumbling in pain at 15, and at 16 I could cross a small room. In both sides of the family, it’s been common to present at 15 to 17. I took an extra decade before I presented and that’s what she called real-time evolution. But when I presented, it became clear to me that there was more things wrong with me than just my lower body. Hence, the shame I feel.”

“What’s that?”

“I had two issues. My ruts were horrible. It was pure agony to go through them every month.”

“So are mine.”

Fin shakes his head. “No. I’ve seen you go through a rut and you managed to hold normal conversations as well as you didn’t reek of pain, only of discomfort and ill-temper. One in about a million people have what I had - a disorder where the body treats its own reproductive system as a hostile infection and reacts by trying to use mostly dormant internal morph cells to fight it.”

“You say ‘had’. Did they cure it?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’ll tell you later,” Finn answers with a cryptic smile. “But it’s not where my shame lies. It also turned out that I’m incapable of feeling sexual attraction to Omegas and women. I cannot, no matter how badly I wish to or how lovely the O is, get an erection unless my intended partner is both male and an Alpha. Hence, my dalliances. I think my mother knows but she still holds onto the hope that if I just meet my truemate I’ll be fixed. That’s why she keeps throwing unmated Os on me.”

There are a lot of things Marlon could have answered instead of, “Maybe your truemate is an Alpha?”

Finn’s scent turns content and happy. “You think so?”

Marlon answers with a crooked smirk and silence. It makes Finn look away with a bigger grin, smelling even more happy. “So what about your ruts?” Marlon asks, changing topics. “I can’t even smell where in the cycle you are.”

“That’s because I don’t have them anymore. My problem put me in contact with a couple of scientists that were working on a way to suppress Heat and Rut symptoms. I decided to sponsor them so we started The National Institute for Reproductive Science. I demanded full insight in return for full funding and let them loose. They got a breakthrough a decade ago and I demanded to get access despite them warning me it was far from finished, could be dangerous and have unforeseen side effects. More research needed to be done but these days it’s illegal to experiment on wolfcats, and humans rarely volunteer to participate in experiments that could be that dangerous. They’ve done their experiments on a morphic rodent species. I still insisted, making myself their first human lab rat. And it worked. It worked a little too well. Those monthly shots stopped my Ruts but also stopped my body from producing sperm cells and a whole slew of other chemicals. I was on those shots for six months and my body remains effectively neutered still, ten years later. During the months I was on them they completely killed my libido as well. I had zero sex-drive. That returned about two months after I stopped getting the shots.”

Marlon purses his lips thoughtfully. “In the past I’ve said I’d give anything to be rid of my Ruts, but I now realise it isn’t true.”

“If you hold on for a couple of more years, they might have perfected the solution. Last time I checked in with them they said they thought they’ve cracked it and are working on fine adjustments. You see, I used my contacts in the military to get an unlimited number of humans for them to experiment on. If we catch Unionites that aren’t stunted, conscripts mostly, they’re sent to the Institute for a series of tests and if they are suitable they get used for tests.” Finn laughs at Marlon. “Sweet James, you should see your face right now,” he grins. “And yes, I agree with you. It’s highly unethical. But so are the work camps where they work us to death if they catch us. So is the intentional slaughter of our kits when they invade us. Besides, these prisoners of war get to choose after they’ve been selected. Be executed as they would have, had they not been sent to the Institute, or participate. No matter what they choose they get assigned a room where they’re kept for a week before they have to make their final decision. These holding cells are comfortable, the food is good, and the people caring for them social and friendly. After the week is up not a single one chooses death. The suppressants aren’t all we’re researching over there. Do you want to come along to see it for yourself?”

* * *

“I did the right thing coming here, Sean. He’s started trusting me. This week he showed me the catacombs under The National Institute for Reproductive Science where they experiment on prisoners of war to solve a whole range of problems. Amongst other things they’ve almost perfected suppressants for Heat and Rut symptoms. They think they’ll have all kinks worked out in a year or two and when they do I’m the first in line to get them. He’s invited me to come along to several events now. Tomorrow we’re going to a debutante ball whatever heck that is. The day after I’m to accompany him to a meeting. Then the day after we’re going to a dinner at Malcolm Westbridge’s house,” Marlon enthuses.

“ _The_ Westbridge?”

Marlon chuckles into the phone. “No other.”

“Okay, you’re really getting a move on things. What did you do to get this breakthrough of trust?”

“As it turns out, he’s only sexually attracted to male Alphas. Bada-bing, bada-boom.”

“And you’re comfortable with that? Fucking him?”

“It’s fine,” Marlon says dismissively and rushes to change the subject. “Did you ask Phillip to put together a file for me?”

Sean huffs in awkward amusement. “I did, yes. He, uh, he went off on me. He asked if you’ve gone senile lately, and said that you’d already asked him to make that file for you sixty years ago. And he said that just because you’ve read it so many times it’s falling apart doesn’t mean you can just expect him to drop all he’s doing to make a copy. Also, uh… he told me to tell you to stop crying like a little kit.”

Marlon blinks in bemusement. “Okay. Lovely. That’s a bust then.”

“Mhm. Say, Mar… you’re not crying, are you? You want to come home you can return at any point, you hear?”

Marlon laughs. “I’m not crying, Sean. Who knows? Maybe I was crying 60 years ago when I read Coombs’ file so many times it fell apart? We’ll never find out since I wasn’t born yet,” he jokes.

Sean doesn’t laugh. “Fuck, I hope you’re right and we’ll never find out. He freaks me out so much more now that I’m no longer certain if he’s a regular loon or a farseer of the myths who just happens to have no concept of chronology,” he says with a troubled tone.

“Relax. We’ve got this. And I’m so close to finding out whether he’s really involved in everything or not. So just focus on whatever you’re doing and trust me.”

“Alright. I’ll do that. Be careful. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

* * *

A debutante ball is a ball where ultra Conservative parents invite bachelor Alphas to get to know their either newly-presented, or Juvies in the process of presenting as Omegas, in hopes that the Alphas will find an O to their liking. ‘James’ would have known all about this with his background. The only excuse ‘James’ has not to have been on one, is that his made-up parents died before he’d finished his higher education and his brother hasn’t tried to get him to find a mate yet. The reason these parents are so eager to get their Omegan offspring mated is because in this state it’s illegal for Omegas to own property since fairly recently. This tradition is much older than that in this sub group of Conservatives and it’s they who have pushed for the law. Marlon isn’t a 100% certain what happens with the holdings and liquid assets if the parents die before their Omega offspring is mated (unless she has a brother) but he’s certain there must be very powerful people profiting off it. To be invited as an Alpha you must come from a good (rich) family of the proper faith and have finished your college education. As a result, every Alpha here is older than the Os they came to get to know. Nothing wrong with that in general. Just take Sandra as an example. She’d been very young and her mate had been very old and it had been love at first whiff. But that had been in a pack setting and that makes a lot of difference. She’d come to live with a mixed group of people in all ages, with a strong Omega leader that could make sure that the power dynamics in a couple remained equal even when one partner had decades more life-experience. There were other members there to talk to, to get advice and second opinions from. Here, there are no such safeguards so when Marlon sees that some of the invited Alphas are _a lot_ older, he reacts to it. Not outwardly. No, he plays his role just fine.

The ball in itself is rather nice, actually. The young girls are being treated as treasures, politely and respectfully. Not what Marlon had imagined. The Alphas listen to them with interest and ask questions. There’s dancing, witty banter, compliments and laughter. Marlon had expected the Os to act more like the demure servant girls back home at Coombs’. But, no. The girls are sprightly and fairly forward. This ball is all about them and they know it.

It makes him appalled and angry that some of the girls are still Juvies only in the process of presenting, like Nceba had been when he met her. But when he looks at the interaction between the soon-to-be Os and the Alphas, maybe it’s not completely horrible since there are no undertones of sexual distraction in the conversations. The Alphas are far more focused on actually getting to know them. The whole ball is overall lacking any kind of innuendos and sexual undertones. Maybe it should have been expected. These are people who believe they only get to make one choice for a mate to live the rest of their lives with. 

Marlon finishes a conversation and goes to fetch more champagne for himself. Finn rolls up alongside of him. “You and Miss Lacroix seem to be getting along well,” Finn says.

“She’s an intriguing young lady,” Marlon agrees.

“I want you to know that if you find an O you feel you might want to mate, you’re welcome to bring her to live with us during the grace period. Afterwards, once you’re mated too, naturally.”

“Live with us during the grace period,” Marlon states flatly, internally panicking because he has no idea what Finn’s talking about. This isn’t something mentioned in the scripture at all. His panic only translates to annoyance in his scent.

“Yes. I know that in The Book of Traditions it says the prospect O should come live in the home _owned_ by the Alpha but these people won’t be that picky about that. You’ve got the right pedigree, and if we manage to liberate Texas you’ll have a small fortune to your name. They’d all accept that the courtship takes place somewhere else as long as adequate living standards are provided. Does your family adhere to the three or six month’s grace?”

“Six,” Marlon deadpans, still uncertain what he’s talking about. He’s never heard of ‘The Book of Traditions’. Had he or Sean known about it they sure would have made sure to study it but now Marlon’s left floundering.

“Six months is a good length of time to court someone and get to know them before deciding whether to go through with a mateship,” Finn agrees. “Does your family’s Tradition allow the O to back out as well or do you do forced mating bonds?”

Marlon stiffens, eyes widening in surprised affront as he turns his head to glare in disbelief at Finn.

Finn laughs. “Dear friend, you should see your face. I take it as the former option is the answer.”

“No offense meant, Sir, but I’d fight the Light itself if it demanded complete eradication of an O’s right to consent to whom to mate and who gets to know her intimately.”

Finn smiles at him, reeking of contentment. “I agree.” He looks around to see if anyone is close enough to overhear them before he looks back at Marlon. “What do you think of the debutante ball Tradition? Your honest opinion.”

“I think it will lead to a weakening in our species. It’s absurd to think otherwise when any O has wanderlust written into her biology if her mate doesn’t measure up.”

“You’re a gift that keeps on giving, James. I knew you were a libertine when you siphoned me outside of that bathroom when we met. I agree with you. As long as we’re in this company I will deny having any such opinions. We don’t want these people knowing we’re coming for them until they’ve served their purpose. But this tradition has to go. An individual should always strive for a personal best instead of making others less. It’s widely accepted that you can’t force a mating bond which is utter nonsense. Of course you can, which is what the grace period is all about but nobody will admit. All these girls have been groomed for it since they were kitlings by well meaning, pious parents just like we were groomed to fall in line and go against our instincts. To force a mating bond all you have to do is isolate someone, make them dependant on you, and be decent towards them. They’ll mistake the affectionate feelings they develop for true love and since they’re given no outer input once the decision is made to get mated the bond will form by itself quickly enough. Once the bond is formed the Alpha needs to do something truly horrific and unforgivable for the matingbond to fade. The tradition to get mated quickly and only have limited options that are tightly controlled, is ruining the long term health of the Conservatives that abide by it. Thankfully, they aren’t that many.”

“As far as I’ve seen, most Conservatives mate a lot earlier than Primals and Progs,” Marlon counters.

Finn inclines his head in agreement. “Getting mated and having kits too soon is widespread. Statistically speaking, us Conservatives have the highest child-birth mortality rate in the country due to how unprepared a newly presented body truly is when it comes to giving birth. Conservatives also top the list when it comes to inbreeding. Did you know that?”

Marlon shakes his head.

”The statistics I’ve seen are skewed since it simply compares the designations but doesn’t take into account context. But I did look into it. We only top the list due to the upper middle class living in large cities. The rents are so high there that the O can’t afford to move into a flat of her own if she even finds one. So she remains with her family until she’s either finished college or found a new place to live. And the upper middle class might afford to give their kits a college education, but they can’t afford to pay for bed and board so she remains living in her father’s household long after the aversion period has ended.”

“And you want to change these things?”

“That’s my aim, yes.”

“Good.” It’s hard to keep thinking of Coombs as an enemy when his goals are so in line with sound thinking. So what if some of the methods he endorses are unethical like the human experiments on prisoners of war? It’s all means to a good end, isn’t it? For the greater good of the people…

* * *

Marlon lies staring at the ceiling with his belly full of anxiety-worms when Finn comes into the bedroom. Marlon sniffs the air while Finn disrobes. Finn’s in a considerable amount of pain again. That’s both their faults. They have too vigorous sex too often. Finn’s pain tolerance is insane. At the dinner party a week ago an Alpha had claimed to be immune to pain. Finn’s scent spiked with anger. ‘That’s a disorder and you should seek medical attention for it. Without pain we cannot gauge when we put ourselves in potentially harmful and deadly situations and we cannot empathize with people enough to understand if we’re hurting them,’ Finn had said. The Alpha had sneered at him. ‘I mean I can ignore pain, not that I don’t feel any. Not like you’d know anything about it, cripple. Rolling around in your chair, coddled and swathed in protection. I bet you’ve never even stubbed your toe.’ Marlon’s protective ire had risen. He’d stood up, uncaring of how everyone at the long table looked at him. ‘Those are fighting words, Mr Hancock. Mr Coombs and I are both officers in the United States’ military. He outranks me and when you mock him, by extension you mock me and the military as a whole. You fancy yourself immune to pain and brag about it? Well, I’m exceptional at causing pain. Time for you to prove yourself.’ The Alpha was _not_ immune to pain. Nor was he a very good fighter. Marlon had expected some kind of backlash to his behaviour, but just like with Carter, there were none. Evoking both of their military ranks nullified the insult to starting a fight in the home of their host. 

Finn’s tolerance of pain came out of need and determination. Growing up he’d often been in so much pain that he’d have to choose between accepting it or suicide. Even these days it could get to levels when it lapped at his determination to live. Sex was often a cause for it, but at the same time sex dulled pain through the chemicals released and the joy Finn felt while having it.

“It’s a problem that they won’t take me seriously about the military,” Finn remarks as he crawls into bed beside Marlon. “They all wave it off as if it’s a good thing that Packrunners make up the lion’s share of our forces. They’re blind fools who’ve forgotten about banking day or who think that was a fluke. I don’t know how we’ll gain control of the military if they think it’s a good thing that Packrunners get themselves killed at the front in our defense, rather than seeing the potential of a military coup happening.”

Marlon hums a non-answer. “How come we don’t have any meetings with any packs? We’re meeting with practically every other group, Progs included.”

Finn kisses his shoulder. Three weeks ago Marlon had debated strategy with a Governor to get rid of the packs in his district. He’d pointed out why the current strategy wouldn’t work and made suggestions. Last week they got news that the packs were obliterated and their kits had been adopted by suitable Conservative families. The knots in Marlon’s belly had started long before then but worsened because of his actions. A month ago he’d withheld crucial information from Sean because it didn’t directly affect the Williams pack. The Williams pack is in an upheaval since the Unionites invaded Canada. Marlon’s not sure if they’ve gone to war or if they’re still all at the estate. He’s losing himself but the alternative is losing Finn. _Phineas_. Yesterday he’d found out that was his middle name. He wonders if Finn is the Phineas of the Phineas file Phillip had ranted about. He tries telling himself that it can’t be. It would be the ‘Coombs file’ if it was, wouldn’t it? Nearly a year in the most equal and respectful relationship he’s ever had and he hadn’t thought to ask what the ‘P’ stood for until it came up during idle chatter yesterday. Finn’s ideas about the model society had grown on him. The problem was, as he’d found out, that it would mean mass conversion so everyone would walk in the light. Everything would have to be controlled by the government. They needed control over what literature could be obtained and what was taught in the public schools to keep everyone in line and have that utopian society. 

“They see me, beloved. They don’t look at me and see a cripple. To them, I’m a threat. So we leave them out of it. We don’t want them knowing we’re coming for them.”

Finn is charismatic and manipulative enough to make people much more powerful than him do his bidding thinking they are doing things for their own benefit. In a year Marlon has had a chance to see Finn do away with a group that had played out their role. It was a good move. The group of extremist ultra-Conservatives that practised complete heresy, had been used to gain control over their area then stabbed in the back, outlawing their practises. ‘Change is painful and frightening and people will fight it even when it ultimately will lead to a better life for them,’ Finn had said. His ability to see things play out long-term was amazing and he was teaching Marlon. The two of them were writing a new version of the scripture as well as a new book of Traditions that would be implemented on a nationwide level as the only true faith at a later stage. Marlon’s losing himself and he knows it. You can’t recite the section of the scripture about the red-eyed Alphas while siphon high and knotted, looking up into a pair of red eyes and _not_ start wondering if there’s actual truth to the words you’re saying. Mass conversion. It’s not a bad idea to create unity. If the scripture is more like the original versions….

The plan is to let it spread like the English language once had. Back in the days America had been a land of many languages. The native packs had different languages as well as any settler coming here. They successfully merged with each other since primal communication was the same. But the spoken and written language? Today English is the national language solely through the actions of the English pack that introduced the printer to America. They guarded the secret of printing and mass distributed books all in English. Anyone wanted to print something had to get it translated to English first or they wouldn’t print it. People who could read set out to learn English as a second language, their kits were taught as well. Suddenly there was an intellectual common language beside the primal communication and soon enough the language spread. It wasn’t the same in Europe where more people had access to printing and the pack that had come up with the printing technique in the first place, distributed their knowledge freely instead of jealously. Back then the journey between the two continents was still unpredictable and dangerous so the most people who wandered oversees weren’t the privileged groups that had access to the tools of the cultural elite. By the time someone made it over with new knowledge of how printing worked, the language was already common.

So that’s the plan and Marlon had already nudged Finn in a more pack-friendly direction. He worked on that on a daily basis. After all, Sean too had fought for the Union to convince them of his sincerity. That’s what Marlon’s doing, he tells himself.

But he has doubts. “What fate have you chosen for me when I’ve played out my role? What _is_ my role?” Marlon asks.

“You’ll never play out your role, beloved. Your place is at my side, as my consort and life-partner. And when the time’s right you’ll step up as the figurehead, the leader the country can look up to. We’ll rule together but they’ll never have to measure me against my wheelchair as long as they’ve got you. My legacy will live on through you when I pass away.”

Marlon is losing himself. He knows it and denies it as Finn kisses him sweetly.

* * *

“Mar, you need to come home. _Now_.” Sean’s voice over the phone is tight and worried. Marlon hasn’t seen him in person for six months. Sean came over for a visit so they could reaffirm their pack bond. A bond that’s now faded - a fact that Marlon’s chosen to ignore. He does find it a bit strange that all his pack bonds have faded so quickly but neglects to worry about it.

“What? Why?”

“We’ve been drafted. Every one of us, including you. Every able-bodied person over the age of 18 years of life with the exceptions of Omegas that are pregnant or have kits under the age of 5. This is not a choice of ours at this point. Unless we unanimously agree in the pack to rebel which we won’t. Thing is, the Union is battering us fucking damn hard. They do raids into America from Canada and they’re too fucking close to us. We are going to war not only due to the draft notices, but to protect our territory and our kits.”

It’s not a choice. Anna is under a serious threat. 

Anna. 

It all boils down to his daughter.

* * *

“What do you mean, ‘you’re leaving’?” Finn’s beside himself, wrapped in the stink of anxiety and fear.

“I don’t want to, Finn, but I’ve been called to serve. It’s a military order.”

“What? No! That’s impossib―” Finn goes white as a sheet. “Are you still registered at West Point?” he asks looking utterly horror-struck. It’s a common thing for a reserve officer to be a registered resident of the military academy that trained them if their own homes are on occupied lands which Marlon’s alias’ is. They’re allowed to live there as well but those who choose to, will sooner rather than later be sent off to the front.

“Yes.”

“ _Why?_ I thought you’d officially moved in with me?” Finn shakes himself, eyes moving as if he’s searching for something inwardly. “We can fix this. If you register as a residence of this state today, we can make an appeal and you won’t have to go.”

“I’ve been called to serve my country. I’m _not_ a coward,” Marlon answers sharply, breaking to pieces on the inside.

“But what we’re doing for the country is much more important,” Finn argues desperately. “If I’d known you weren’t registered here yet we could have hold off sending the draft notices…”

Marlon’s heart aches. “You knew about the statewide drafting orders on the East Coast already?”

“Naturally.”

Marlon scowls. “Juvies are being drafted. Why are Juvies being drafted?”

“They’re physically developed enough to fight and it’s a measuring system that is equal to all designations, even the Progs that are so stunted they’ve stopped presenting and instead reproduce as a static species. And there are safeguards in place to make sure every kit and Juvie below that age is taken care of. Not everyone drafted will be sent to serve at the front. A big part will see to the needs of the army as well as the people. It’s all been calculated. You don’t need to go.”

Marlon’s outraged. And yet, his heart clenches. He doesn’t want to go.

It all boils down to Anna. His daughter is in danger.

* * *

It’s a long drive home. He keeps catching himself making an instinctual sorrowful noise while he drives. He knows he’s calling for his Patriarch. He tells himself it’s Jed he’s calling for. Yet time and time again he seriously considers turning the car around. He thinks of Anna. Twice he stops his car to cry.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We will never find out if Phineas Coombs knew who Marlon was or not. I personally don't think so but on the other hand, it would definitely be Coombs' Modus Operandi to go with the flow and lead Marlon where he wanted Marlon to go. Like Marlon's suggestion to siphon during sex? I find it a bit odd that Coombs' wouldn't know why sex would be less painful if you siphon at the same time. He's read so many things that little detail bothered me. Yes, yes. *makes dismissive handgesture* I'm the writer so I should know. But I don't. Live with it. ;) My lovely beta pointed out that if Coombs knew, the relationship would have been incredibly toxic, despite Marlon experiencing it as the most equal relationship he's ever had. And she's right about that.
> 
> Also, because it amused me, if the extremest ultra-Conservatives had tried and succeeded to gain the ultimate power in the country, 200 years down the line we probably would have had a regular ABO with the abusive Omega status we're used to seeing. It's not going to happen and there was never a risk of it happening either.


	24. A Brother's Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find out why Gabe challenged Marlon to become Patriarch. And in the past, Marlon has to face the truth of his bond to Finn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter. :)

* * *

“I can’t believe this bullshit. He was brainwashing you. Fuck, but he was fucking narrating what was happening for you. Like that bit about forcing a mating bond. ‘Oh, nothing, just isolate the person, make them dependant on you and show them some kindness’,” Dean mimics in an exaggerated tone and stabs a piece of broccoli on his fork as if it had personally offended him. He points the broccoli at Marlon angrily. “You were fucking doing it to yourself! _You_ chose to siphon him. You encouraged that bullshit.” He puts the broccoli in his mouth and chews aggressively. He smells of aggression but very faintly underneath it, there’s fear. Luci doesn’t think anyone else can smell it. It’s been there all while Father talked about falling deeper into the claws of Coombs.

“I did, yes,” Marlon agrees, cutting into the sirloin on his plate. “Sullivan Phineas Coombs will always remain one of my heroes due to his intellect, but I will also always harbour shame for not seeing what was happening. By the time I started understanding, bio-compulsion was already at work on me and I thoroughly loved the life I was living. On top of that, Finn listened to my opinions. Where we differed, he was prone to nudging his plans in my direction. Had I remained with him, it’s possible that I could have persuaded him to remodel his utopian society to something any Packrunner could agree to. It might very well have gone the other direction too.”

“These books of Tradition… Like, is that something every Conservativ―?” Dean starts but Marlon cuts him off with a headshake.

“No. Only some groups. Mostly within the upper class. They’re not alone in having traditions like it, though. There are groups that will raise their boy-kits to know how to court an O in a way that will end up forcing a mating bond while at the same time encourage them to seek out love with only the strongest and smartest Os they can find. They get told they need to measure up to her just like we do. Or him. And that they need to outsmart her or him to mate.” Marlon gives Dean a very meaningful look. There’s a silent little gap in the flow of conversation created by their body language that makes Lucifer think that Dean and Father have had a conversation in private that they’re now referencing. “At the time I left Finn,” Marlon goes on with the air of switching subject, “I’d seen him destroy one Conservative doctrine with his patient manipulation, but I’d also seen him put in motion the destruction of two others whose practices are still exceedingly rare and outlawed today after his interference. He aimed to destroy any Tradition that took away the Omega’s agency and rights, and didn’t encourage the Alpha to strive for excellence.”

“I call bull. Wasn’t he behind the spreading laws that forbid Omegas to own anything?” Dean asks.

“He was,” Marlon answers. “But it was a step amongst many. A method of making it worse so when he introduced his real plan his frontmen would appear as heroes and liberators. _I_ would have appeared to be a heroic liberator. I liked that. Endless power, admiration of the masses coming from actually making their lives better? He was preaching to the choir.” Marlon puts down his utensils to reach over the table and lay a hand over Dean’s forearm. “What you have to understand about me, my Love, is that there are very few things I won’t do to achieve my goals and protect my pack. And sometimes, I admit, I get blinded by my own focus.”

“Wasn’t it something like that happening when Gabe stole the Patriarchy?” Luci asks. “I can’t remember what he got upset about.”

Raff turns towards Luci with an amused look. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember. What surprises me is that you don’t have nightmares about it still,” he sniggers.

Mike grins. “Yes, the way you squealed when he poured those bugs over you while you slept?”

“Bugs! Fuck, now I remember.” Luci shudders and his brothers―like the assholes they are―laugh at him.

“Wait, what? Gabe has been Patriarch?” Dean asks with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Gabe? _Our_ Gabe? That brags about being bottom rung?”

“He certainly has,” Marlon chuckles. “For several whole days before he fled the country.”

“What’s the story behind that?” Dick asks. “Luci told me he was furious enough to challenge you and you backed out.”

“You knew?” Dean stares at Dick with eyes that go impossibly wider. Dick makes a little shrug.

“When your own son challenges you and attacks with ferocity enough that you have to choose between life and death, you fold no matter how stupid you think his reasons are,” Marlon answers and takes a swig of his sparkling water.

“But Lucifer said he turned out to be right, not stupid at all?” Dick persists.

“Okay, it’s like this,” Mike begins, “we had just bought a large piece of undeveloped land. There we’d planned to build a factory to produce the new GX3-5. But when it was time to start building, we couldn’t.”

“The land was swarmed by a bunch of hippy-dippy protestors,” Marlon fills in looking like he’s tasting something foul. “They were blocking us from building so I sent Gabe to investigate.”

“He met an O there that he got quite infatuated with, as I remember it,” Raff tells them and lifts his eyebrows seeking confirmation from his brothers.

“Her name was Alexa Gordinger,” Mike agrees.

“Alexa Gordinger that founded the American branch of the Nature Conservancy?” Dick asks.

“None other,” Mike agrees with a nod. “And Gabe went all moon eyes over her. She and her group wanted us to stop the build because it was one of the few remaining habitats for a small beetle, homunculus lautus.”

“You still remember the name of it?” Luci scrunches up his face in distaste. “It’s a fucking bug. It’s gross. It’s disgusting.”

“That’s the exact reason you got them dumped on you while you slept, Luci,” Raff reminds him.

Luci does a full body shiver in disgust. “Will you stop reminding me? I’m trying to _eat_. I can’t do that if I have creepy crawlers all over me.”

Everybody at the table show their true faces as horrible human beings, sniggering at him. Even Dick and Dean. 

“Hey, I’m just trying to tell the story,” Mike says with faux innocence, then yelps the next moment as Luci kicks him on the shin.

“The beetle in question was the little cleaner beetle,” Raff tells them. “It’s named that way because it was thought to break down certain toxins in the ground and water around its habitat. Around the time this took place scientists had just discovered that it wasn’t the beetle itself that breaks down toxins, but they use a chemical to scent mark their territory in a similar fashion like us. And instead there are microorganisms that are dependant on the bug’s chemical and it’s they who break down the toxins. Today we’re funding research to see if we can duplicate the chemical so we can take these microorganisms and set them loose in environments that have been damaged by pollution.”

Marlon takes the word. “Gabe came home and told us about the near-extinct bug and about the wonderful miss Gordinger, so I looked into it. The breakthrough in the research wasn’t public yet and all I saw was a dead-end infatuation and a bug that might go extinct. I thought we have enough bugs as it is―”

“Damn right we do,” Luci agrees.

“―so I decided we’d run the protesters off to start the build. My boys agreed with me. That’s when Gabe started throwing tantrums. Amongst other things he collected a whole jar of bugs to pour over poor Luci―”

“ _Poor_?! You giggled about it for days!” Luci points out indignantly.

Marlon smirks. “Just because I felt sorry for you doesn’t mean it wasn’t funny. They were only tiny, harmless bugs. Didn’t even bite.” He tuts at Luci. 

Luci sulks with the dread of the memory of waking up with bazillion bugs crawling all over him. ‘Since you’re so determined to take away their home, I’m rehoming them,’ Gabe had said. He’s the worst brother ever. _Ever_.

“We all thought it was just something he was doing to impress Alexa,” Mike says. “And she didn’t return his amorous feelings. But it did end with him challenging us all for rank, including Father, only so he could stop the build and make the area a nature preserve. Because what he did scientists are very close to having an organic solution to cleaning up natural disasters we cause, as well as it saved several other species from going extinct. The little cleaner beetle lived in several other areas where they ended up getting their habitats destroyed―”

“Not by us,” Raff points out.

“―and there two kinds of birds have gone extinct, one type of plant, and instead a type of toxic mould has taken over that the microorganism used to hold in check. It has meant that the people living and working in these places have gotten permanent respiratory damages and other health issues from the toxic spores. It probably would have happened to our factory workers as well had the factory got built.”

“Huh. I gotta say, I’m a little impressed,” Dean says and reaches for his beer. He ignores the glass that’s been set for him in favour of drinking straight from the bottle.

“You darn well should be, son. Gabriel is a 5’8” parental headache on legs but when he becomes passionate about something you’d do well to listen. Unlike me and Lucifer he doesn’t really have a rebellious streak. Mischievous, yes, but not rebellious. So not listening to him when he gets worked up will come with a backlash.”

Silence settles for a couple of moments while all of them focus on their food for a bit.

“I keep thinking of how good of an example this is for how even the strongest person can be manipulated and indoctrinated,” Raff says at last. “Humans no matter their designation will bond with anything, that’s a known fact.”

“Even Roombas,” Mike jokes and grins at Luci.

“Hey, she’s a good girl and she deserves to know it,” Luci answers with a smirk. “Though you didn’t have to put googly eyes on her.”

“She kept bumping into things. I thought I’d help her out,” Raff says with a smile.

Luci jerks his head in Raff's direction, eyebrows climbing upwards in surprise. “That was you?” he asks and laughs in delight.

Raff shrugs. “Like I said, humans will bond with anything. We hate being bored and alone. Isolating someone to win them over works even with Progs that you can’t bind with a scent bond. It’s quite fascinating.” He shares a look with Dick who nods in accord.

“Fascinating? It’s motherfucking scary, is what it is,” Dean protests. “Coombsy gives me the chills and not in a good way.”

“Yes, he sure was brilliant,” Marlon agrees with a nostalgic little smile.

Dean looks at him like he’s mad. “You’re fucked up. I hope you’re not contagious.”

Marlon bursts into a startled laugh. “Oh, but I was. I returned home with a new pack bond. I might very well have returned to Finn with Anna in my arms and Aiden on my heels and declared he had to take them both in or I’d leave again. He wouldn’t have said no. As much as I was under the compulsion of my bond to my Patriarch, he would have been experiencing the same compulsion towards me. I’m also certain that while he’d long since given up on having kits he secretly longed for it. It was in the way he spoke and smelled when he asked my opinions on adoption.”

“Do you really think uncle Aiden would have followed you back to Coombs?” Luci asks. Every time he travels he feels that hollow longing back to his pack and to Father. Imagining leaving them behind to follow Mikey to another pack feels… he’d say impossible, but at the same time, he’d be so torn if Mikey left.

“I know he would have, son. That, I know for a fact.”

* * *

Marlon’s never seen Sean and Aiden look so unsettled as they do when they realise there is no trace of a Williams pack bond on him. That doesn’t stop them from greeting him with tight, loving hugs and mark him up, properly claiming him. Simply marking him up won’t bring back the pack bond, it’s more like calling dibs, but it feels good nonetheless.

One of the best things about Aiden is that he listens. Marlon’s always thought so. He also has a penchant to ask questions and make questioning statements, sometimes dumb ones, just to get them out of the way. Like when Arvid told them about Progs having to wear identifiers and Aiden said it’s good so it’d be clear they weren’t Unionists and therefore everyone would know not to attack them. Aiden didn’t actually believe it would make things safer for Progs but he wanted the answer to why put to words. Marlon usually likes that. He doesn’t like it at all when Aiden says “It could be a pack bond.” His tone is lilting it to a question and his demeanour is worried, a troubled frown on his face.

“It’s just a friendship bond. He’s a Conservative, they don’t run in packs,” Marlon assures him, feeling a gnawing worry in his belly. Sean shares a concerned look with Aiden that only serves to heighten Marlon’s misgivings. They’re in Aiden’s room at the Alpha house on campus. These days he has the biggest room to himself, an indication of how he's moved up in the fraternity hierarchy.

“We'll see about that," Sean says looking uncomfortable. “Right now I want you to give us both a report.”

Marlon does. He tries to be as honest as possible. Sometimes it's hard since what he tells them might hurt Finn. Aiden sits on his bed and Sean by the desk, chair turned to face Marlon who is standing in the middle of the room. They take turns asking questions, interrupting him. Sean's heard most of it in broad strokes but now they're picking him apart, dragging the finer details out. Including personal details about his sexlife with Finn.

“Jed and Jane won't believe that Coombs is much of a danger to us. Jane's so pissed at you and Jed's worked a lot with the governor lately. He won't believe the governor will turn on us for some random aristocrat down south. Especially since you're saying that Coombs doesn't bribe politicians,” Aiden says and closes his eyes to massage his neck with one hand. “We'll have to fix this ourselves. Tomorrow I get a car, drive down there and kill him. That way―” 

Marlon moves before he can think. One leap, Aiden’s eyes flying open in shock and terror as claws dig into his throat to draw blood― 

If Marlon moved fast, Sean moved faster.

Marlon freezes in position when the cold blade touches his own throat.

The three of them are frozen in position for what feels like an eternity - Marlon and Aiden both wide-eyed in shock at what Marlon just did, Sean behind Marlon ready to slit his throat should he continue his attack. Marlon and Aiden’s scent are both neutral in the way they are when you’re too shocked to comprehend something, Sean’s distressed. 

When Aiden’s scent switches to something full of mourning and fear and he licks his lips, pure dread courses through Marlon. The reality of what he nearly did starts to sink in. He swallows past the sharp blade laid at his throat. Marlon thanks the Light for Sean’s lightning reflexes. The next beat he catches himself, multiplying his shock by addressing the wrong god in his thoughts. He’s frozen. Can’t move a muscle. Heart hammering hard.

“T-that’s a pack bond,” Aiden says shakily and infinitely slowly and carefully pries Marlon’s clawed fingers off his throat.

“Yes, it is. _Fuck_ ,” Sean agrees between gritted teeth. “Mar, take a slow step back for me…”

Marlon doesn’t move, barely breathes, he’s starting to tremble. Can’t make sense of the two colliding ‘ _no no nos_ ’ bouncing around in his head, shattering his heart. He can’t accept that it’s a pack bond, can’t accept that he nearly killed Aiden who he loves more than anything, can’t stand the thought of Finn dying. He just _can’t_. Sean presses lightly with his knife. Marlon can feel the painful sting of the blade and yet he’s _still_ unable to move. 

“It’s okay, Mar. Just take it easy. Back up a few steps. We’re not going to hurt you and Aiden’s not going to assassinate Coombs. At this stage it would only serve to inflame the hostility between designations. Just back up,” Sean says and removes the knife rather than going through with the threat. He wraps an arm with careful movements around Marlon’s midriff and takes a decisive step back, pulling Marlon with him. Marlon stumbles backwards unresisting and stares down at his trembling hands. 

There’s blood on his claws. Not much, but it’s Aiden’s. He’d been about to dig in and rip without a thought. He’s nauseous and disbelieving. “I don’t― I. I don’t―” _know why I did that._ He can’t get the words out, lost in his stunned state.

“Fuck. I’d been so sure he could do it. After all, I could, and I was undercover for years,” Sean says, directing himself towards Aiden. “I really didn’t think he’d be compromised.”

“Weren’t you undercover amongst stunted Unionists? They don’t form bonds. Didn’t Jed cement Mar’s bond properly before he left?” Aiden asks, voice a lot more stable than his scent says it should be. 

Sean’s silent for a beat then slaps a hand over his face. “ _ **FUCK!**_ ” He drags his hand down his face smelling of distress and annoyance. “This is my fault. My first time as a handler and I fuck up.”

“I take it as a no?”

“No, he didn’t. I’m so fucking stupid! Mar and I spoke about it before the party because Mar was depressed. He told me Jed was avoiding him and refused to cement the pack bond despite that he’d climbed so high in rank that I no longer did the trick. He was feeling compulsion around Jed already. Mar _told me this_ and I forgot. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._ ”

“Then we’ve got a problem. Jane won’t take him back with a new pack bond. She’s so mad at him for dropping out of college, running away without a word and lying about it. She won’t be happier when she finds out he did it because he knew she’d say no if he asked. If he’d have no bond or still our pack bond, she wouldn’t refuse him. She loves him too much. But now? It’d take a month at least to get her to forgive and take him back. We don’t have a month or we’ll miss the date we need to report to duty. We need a mating bond within the pack or Jed to come to his senses. Maybe Sandra?”

Sean shakes his head. “You weren’t present when Mar knocked her up. If the chemistry for a quick mating bond would have been there they would have been mated by the end of her Heat. No joke. He was with her more times than me and Jed put together, marking her up literally from top to toe. _And_ she triggered his Rut. It’s out of the question.” Sean paces back and forth beside Marlon, reeking of stress. “Fuck, Mar, why can’t you be like ordinary people and mate easil―” He stops dead and looks up at nothing. “Shit. He can’t meet with the kits before he’s properly sniped back. He’s a walking biohazard now. They see him as their primary. He reaffirms any bonds with them it’s a 50/50 chance of them taking over _his_ pack bond. Especially Clara.” Kits are special that way. They bond quickly and easily with their primary caregivers with nothing but ordinary marking needed. It’s a function to make it easier to adopt the kits of fallen foes. “Same goes for Dave and the others lower ranking ones who’ve remained loyal to him. They can’t under any circumstances siphon.”

“So it’s up to Jed to snipe him then,” Aiden states.

Marlon rips himself out of his daze enough to look up. “And if he doesn’t?”

Aiden looks at him with a worried frown. He’s silent for an eternity. He swallows audibly and gets up from the bed to come stand in front of Marlon as close as he can. Marlon’s hands, still held in front of him in a oh-no-what-have-I-done position, keeps him a foot away. He’s bleeding lightly but the scratch marks aren’t very deep. “If he doesn’t…” His scent fills with mourning and he has to stop to swallow. And swallow again. The scent of saline preludes his eyes glossing over with unshed tears. “Then, little brother…” His lips wobble. He has to pause to swallow over a lump in his throat again. He lifts his hand to cup the back of Marlon’s neck and leans their foreheads together. Heartbreak that manifests in physical pain laces through his scent. When he speaks again his voice is broken from holding back tears. “Then you’ll have to take me down South… and introduce me… to my new Patriarch.” A sob tears itself free. “And you’ll have to teach me how to be a Conservative…” Another sob. “Because I’ll never be on any other side than yours―” His voice breaks completely on the last word.

Marlon pulls him close and clings to him, keening in pain as his heart shatters. He’s breaking into a million pieces. Howling his own heartbreak and burying his face in Aiden’s neck. Sobbing like a little kit. It hurts so much more to know that even if he lost himself down South, he never lost Aiden.

* * *

“Oh dear. Well, isn’t this a nice, delightful evening,” Dick says and dabs tears from his eyes daintily with a napkin.

Dean lets out a short, startled and sorrowful laugh and dries his own tears with the back of his sleeve before blowing his nose in the napkin. They’re all crying. It doesn’t help that Marlon had been just as wobbly telling what uncle Aiden had said as Aiden had been saying it. “Yeah…” Dean says. “This is a motherfucker of a story. I love Aiden so much right now and I’ll never even get the chance to meet him in person.”

“He had the sweetest soul hidden behind the exterior of a playboy Alpha,” Dick says with a nostalgic smile looking at the wine glass in front of him. The plates have been cleared but they’re still seated by the kitchen table. “We’d have these moment between the two of us while I was working as his assistant. When we were close sometimes we’d just stop. Like if we were leaving his office at the same time and he’d put his hand over mine on the door handle and both of us would just stop and go calm. He’d look down at me with the softest gaze, sometimes touching my back lightly. And we’d just stand there. It’d feel like someone paused time and I was calm and content just standing there in silence with him. I lived for those moments.”

“Oh, great. Now you’re making it worse,” Dean complains and sniffles. But he gives Dick a watery smile to take the sting out of the accusation.

“If it makes you feel better, there are people we too have never met that Father’s telling us about, that I feel sorrow over,” Mike says. His eyes are glossy but he hasn’t been sobbing the same way Luci and Dean have. “I’ve grown to love Arvid, for an instance.”

“Technically, you have met him, son. Both you and Luci. But I don’t expect you to recall it since you were small kits at the time,” Marlon says having regained most of his composure. He still smells of sorrow. All of them do. “We remained friends until the day he died and we burned him at the estate despite him belonging to another pack. His mate and I agreed to do that since we weren’t certain what pack he’d want to run with. So you’ve met him.” Marlon smiles cheekily. “You’ve even nursed from him on occasion. Charles and he got along very well.”

“What?” Luci says and shares a surprised look with Mike. “Then why didn’t he end up in our pack?”

“Yes. We were born after the war. If he was still alive then, how did he die? He wasn’t _that_ much older than you,” Mike asks with wide eyes.

Marlon chuckles. “I’ll get to that. But first, we had another problem to solve. I’d been quite seriously compromised and if it hadn’t been for Aiden’s willingness to follow me back to Finn to simply switch side and fight against everything and everyone he loved for my sake, I might have returned to Finn. The pull was strong. But I’d rather have died than to break Aiden’s heart by asking him to join me. And so…”

* * *


	25. Broken Relationships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon does what he should have done before he left - he goes to confront Jed to make him cement the bond. What he finds isn't what he expected.

* * *

“Sorry, Sir, I can't let you go up there," the armed guard says politely. He's got a necklace with the star of the One around his neck. So does the other guard by the elevator.

“I'm Marlon Williams. This is my property."

The guard makes a frustrated face. "Sir. I can smell that you are related to the Williams pack. But this is pack property and I've been made familiar with the pack bond. I can't smell it on you and Mr Williams has said not to be distributed.”

Marlon refuses to accept a no. Turning back now is not an option or he’ll have to rip Aiden away from everyone he loves. “This is _my_ property. You're going to prevent me from accessing my own property?” he growls.

“But, Sir―”

* * *

Marlon knocks on the door, leaving bloody smears on the wood. He waits. When nobody opens he knocks again, harder and without letting up.

It takes several minutes before the door handle moves. Marlon takes a step back as the door slowly opens. He's angry but is almost jarred out of it when he sees Jed lean against the door post with half a bottle of whiskey dangling in a loose grip, shirt wrinkled hanging open. His tanned skin looks pasty, he's got dark rings under his eyes, his eye-whites are red, and his gaze is vacant. He looks Marlon up and down slowly, taking in the blood on Marlon's arms and around his mouth. “What did you do?" 

"There were two Conservatives downstairs who tried to stop me from entering my property to see my Patriarch.”

Jed sniffs demonstratively twice. "That smells like a lie,” he says flatly.

Marlon's anger returns with a vengeance. “That's _your_ fault. You're a hecking coward. Instead of standing up at a pack meeting and saying that you wanted me to be expulsed, that to you, I was no longer welcome in the pack, you hid away and refused to cement my bond.”

"That's not―" Jed starts in annoyance. “Sean cemented it for you," he says instead, annoyance fading.

“No, he didn't. He couldn't. We were almost the same rank. He _couldn't_.”

Jed stares blankly at him for a bit then closes his eyes and leans his head against the door post. “That's unfortunate," he states blandly. He opens his eyes, takes a swig of the whiskey, pushes the bottle into Marlon's hands then turns to walk into the apartment, leaving the door open in an unspoken invite.

Marlon follows, closing the door after himself, looking around curiously. It smells of smoke and alcohol but isn't messy. They pass a bathroom and kitchen and come into a big, open plan room with office space on one side and a bed at the other. Marlon had expected something more extravagant out of Jed’s personal hideaway. The apartment Sean uses when he sleeps here is far more impressive. Jed walks up to the desk and lifts the receiver of the phone to dial a number without sitting down. “Yes, hi, it's me, Jedikiah. I'm at the apartment building. There are two dead security guards downstairs. I want you to clean it up and make it go away then I want two more guards on duty. And I don't want to be disturbed. Just get it done. Thank you.”

Marlon catches a familiar scent, sniffs his way to the desk, puts down the bottle and pulls out the top drawer. He removes a little box and flips the lid open while Jed watches him. “Drugs," Marlon states in confusion as he sees the downers inside. He frowns and looks up to meet Jed's gaze. “You're high," he says.

Jed chuckles humorlessly. “Why do you think people always say you're just like me? Or why Sean was about to challenge me when you dragged me back to this miserable excuse for a life?”

“But back then you didn't―” Marlon cuts himself off. 

“Didn't I?" Jed lifts an eyebrow and leans his hip against the desk, crossing his arms over his chest. “You know, my mind never stops. Just like yours, it goes on and on and on. It never _ever_ stops. Sure, I sleep better but my dreams take over exactly where my waking mind left off and I don’t get any rest. None.” He sighs. “Karen… she could make it stop. With her, I had moments of peace. As much as I love Jane, I don’t get that with her. Luckily, back in college, I did the same discovery as you did at the Sanctuary. Hence…” He gestures vaguely at the box.

Marlon remembers Sean saying that Marlon wasn’t the only one who regularly did drugs but he’d never have guessed it was Jed Sean was talking about. He closes the lid and stares at its now blood-smeared surface for a beat then puts it back in the drawer.

“Does he make your mind stop?” Jed asks.

“Who?” Marlon asks. Jed sniffs demonstratively twice. “What? No. He just nudged it into another direction and taught me things.”

“Learning makes you happy. I want you to be happy. So why are you here?”

Marlon growls, ticked off. “This wasn’t meant to be a pack bond. It’s only because I was suffering from _your_ rejection it turned into one. So _you_ need to rectify it and darn well snipe me back!” It might not be true. It’s possible it might have turned into a pack bond anyway because everything about Finn is incredible and Marlon loved him before the bond was in place, but he’s hardly going to tell Jed that.

Jed’s eyes go sad for a moment before he closes them, bends his neck and massages the bridge of his nose. The sadness doesn’t translate to his scent but it has been so neutral all the time Marlon’s been here that he’s certain Jed’s doing his mind-trick to control his scent. “That’s not a decision I can make on my own, Mar. Sniping someone who isn’t already mated within a pack is a big decision and Jane has the last say in it. We’ve already had so many fights about you since you left our mating bond nearly faded. _I_ cannot decide to disregard the pack rule like that.” He opens his eyes to look at Marlon without removing the hand pinching the bridge of his nose.

Desperation washes over Marlon, making him cold all over. Then anger makes him hot. Feelings shift rapid fire - anger-sadness-desperation-anger. There’s a pit of anxiety in his stomach.

At first, he doesn’t know what to do. What does he need to say to convince Jed?

But then it comes to him. He doesn’t need to say anything. He just needs to override consent the same way he did when he brought Jed back from scentlessness.

Jed’s watching him. Waiting. He’d put so much stress on the word ‘I’ in the last sentence he spoke he might as well have meant to add ‘ _but **you** can._’ Did he? There’s a lot of anticipation in the way he’s watching Marlon now.

Marlon steps around the desk, grabs Jed by the arm blocking his face and pulls him close so he can reach his neck. Jed lets himself be handled as Marlon rubs his nose against the gland behind his ear until it starts leaking. He licks at the gland as soon as he feels the silky oil against his nose, then starts siphoning.

Jed might know how to hide the feelings in his scent but he can’t mask them while being siphoned. It’s almost a shock to find how worse for the wear Jed is. He’s intoxicated and high on downers―that, Marlon already knew―but he’s also so severely depressed he’s one step from losing his scent all over again. There’s anger there deep down as well. And old aches barely registering. Marlon licks again and does it one more time. His own glands finally kick into gear. He hears Jed scent the air when they do but Jed remains passive. On the third siphoning Marlon starts feeling that lethargic high kick in. He takes a step away, rubs his own ear gland to coat it with secretion then moves his finger to Jed's lips. Jed keeps watching him. He doesn't open his mouth. Marlon rubs his finger in the seam of Jed's lips, the blood on his hand smearing like Prog lipstick. When he still doesn't open Marlon grabs his jaw and presses his fingers into the cheeks to force his mouth open. Jed finally opens so Marlon can push his finger in and force him to siphon. Jed could have teethed. He could have bitten the finger clear off. He doesn't. He closes his eyes with a look of relief and pleasure and when Marlon withdraws his finger Jed doesn't stop siphoning. Marlon steps in close again and bites Jed demandingly on the shoulder a couple of times before he goes back to suck on the gland.

This time when he siphons, he picks up immense relief and pleasure mixed in with Jed's depression. But the siphon high is really starting to take hold on Marlon now. It's harder to think of anything but here and now and the need to keep going. Discerning feelings gets more difficult when Jed sucks at his gland and siphons again. Marlon turns into jelly and Jed starts getting aggressive and demanding. 

Once bonding sex is initiated like this it's hard to stop. Not that Marlon wants to.

Reigniting the pack bond proves more difficult than Marlon had hoped even if the personal bond between them reforms at first go.

“Did you tell Jane you were coming here to meet me?” Jed asks once they've regained consciousness, lying wrapped around each other in the bed.

“No. Sean forbade me to go home. He said that as long as I'm compromised I'm a biohazard and I might accidentally snipe some of the kits. He fears I'll take Aiden, the kits, and return to…” Marlon hesitates before finishing the sentence, “the enemy.” It hurts to call Finn the enemy. It's hard to see him that way. He reminds himself Finn wants to eradicate the whole Packrunning culture and tries to forget the bubbles of happiness he got in his chest when Finn smiled.

“Sean knows you're back?"

“Of course. He's my handler.” 

Jed curses. "I knew it was a lie that you went with Nceba. We found her on a farm in Wyoming, living with her mate and five other people. She was well and happy but hadn't been back here since she left.”

Marlon's heart flutters then clenches when he hears that. Instead of hurting himself by asking more about Nceba he asks, “You looked for me?"

“Last time you left Aiden said he'd drag you back. But he just wilted instead. So we figured we'd bring you and your mate back, sniping her and any additional mates and kits. Jane was so worried until we tracked down Nceba and figured out you'd lied. You were gone without a trace and nobody could find you.”

"Aiden and Sean knew where I was.”

Jed huffs in annoyance. "No wonder they didn't manage to find you. Sean was in charge of the search."

“Don't put blame on Aiden or Sean. They couldn't have stopped me.”

Jed snorts. "Of course, they couldn't stop you. An oncoming train couldn't stop you. An earthquake, blizzard, and tornado working together couldn't stop you. Nothing can stop you when you fixate on something. And this time? You decided to go undercover amongst the Unionites?”

"No. The Conservatives."

Jed makes a frustrated noise. "Mar, how many times do I have to tell you that they are not our enemies?”

“They are. The man I've been living with has been manipulating people for decades to get rid of Progs and Packrunners alike as well as the most extreme Conservative groups. He's behind everything that's been happening. Pack wars, designation segregation, school prayers, the age draft, everything.”

"Uh-huh.” Jed couldn’t look less convinced. “And does he have a name?”

"Coombs.”

"Sullivan P Coombs?”

“Yes. You know him?"

“No. But I've met him. He's a smart man but I very much doubt he's much of a threat. He spends most of his fortune on books and research. He's a scholar. That's it.”

"So am I.”

Jed chuckles humorlessly. "He says, coming here with blood up to his elbows,” he mutters sarcastically to himself. He rolls on top of Marlon to stand over him on all fours. “You're not a scholar. You're a rogue warrior who happens to be well read. And we'll talk about your prolonged absence later. There'll be plenty of time to do that since you just told me Jane doesn't know you're here and you haven't been back home yet. That means she doesn't know you don't have our bond and I'm not going to let you leave until you do. And if you try to leave early, which you might when the panic of Coombs’ bond fading sets in, I'll damned well chain you to the bed. I'm going to knot you once for every time I've wanted to knot you when you were a Juvie. For every sleepless night and all the self-loathing, guilt and anguish you've caused me. You won't be able to walk once I'm done. Is that clear?”

"We don't have that much time. We have to report to duty in about a month,” Marlon jokes.

Jed chuckles. “We'll just have to skip out on breaks then. But first, we're going to have a cold shower to wash off all that blood. When I siphon you I want to taste only you and me.”

Marlon hadn't expected to panic and try to leave when Finn's bond started to fade. But two days into the process he has a major freakout and gets aggressive. Suddenly it makes sense to lock all the doors, have guards and several people working in shifts when you snipe someone. It makes sense to time snipings to Heats and Ruts and it makes sense that sniping is taught to be treated like a courtship. Technically, you could snipe someone just by continuously marking them up for eons with no other input but markings from pack members. But the 'quick fix’ for adults requires sex and you can't have someone skunking, so positive feelings towards your snipers are a must. Marlon _wants_ to be made part of the pack again, he _wants_ to take Jed's knot and he still panics when Finn’s bond starts fading. He’s thinking ‘screw it’ and is ready to high-tail it back to the south. That's when he finds out what a frightful fighter Jed is. That taunting line towards Sean at the meeting? 'I’m currently physically weaker than I usually am. Who knows? You might stand a chance.’ Not a joke. When Marlon tries to make a run for it he finds himself tied to the bed bleeding with a light concussion. He realizes he'd need the luck of the Light and surprise on his side to stand a chance against Jed.

Nearly a week later it's done. The only bond Marlon’s got left to Finn is the love in his heart. They're both exhausted and ache everywhere. “I wish you'd have done that before I'd left. Why didn't you?”

Jed draws random doodles in the sweat on Marlon's back. It takes a long time before he answers. “You've made me a bad person, Mar. Technically, I know that you get a stronger bond to whoever coaxes you out of scentlessness. If it was another adult who'd brought me back we'd been making love multiple times daily for weeks afterwards. It's a compulsion. But you were a Juvie and I still felt that compulsion.”

"First question, how does that work on the battlefield? Second question, why the heck did you avoid me after I'd presented? Or when I'd climbed into the inner circle?”

Jed chuckles, darkly and without humour. He rolls on top of Marlon and enters him smoothly. Marlon's already so relaxed and full of semen, faux slick and secretion it's as easy as breathing to take Jed's erection. “Alright. You're asking the first question because this was taught to you by a mercenary who used this method not to lose people to depression during battle?” he asks rhetorically. "The answer is, it doesn't. There's no time to bond physically while under fire. But the compulsion will still be there. If you're tactical you'll choose someone high ranking to force the siphoning. The one brought back will not let the person out of sight for long and you've got yourself a bodyguard for the superior since anyone under that level of compulsion while feeling as vulnerable as you do when you’re brought back, will guard their ‘savior’ very closely for weeks at least. I use the word savior ironically because it’s hell coming back before you’re ready, Mar. A damned hell.”

The Commander had forced Arvid to siphon the man who was Captain when they’d found Arvid. He must have been thinking tactically. “If you’re trying to make me feel guilty, save your breath. You’re alive and you’re here. That’s what’s important.”

“The pack didn’t need me, Mar. Sean would have made an excellent Patriarch after he got settled in the role.”

Marlon hisses in frustration and squeezes his ass to hear Jed gasp. “ _I_ needed you. And you, you cowardly turd, withdrew at the same time that you sent Aiden away and removed or blocked every function I had in the pack. If you were so darn bitter about being brought back you could have yelled at me or beat the crap out of me or hecking darn anything but hitting me with a wall of silence.”

"You don't get what you did to me. I'm just a man, Marlon. A normal man with shortcomings and flaws. I loved you, then suddenly I loved you as an _adult_. But you weren't. And still, I wanted nothing more than lock myself in a room with you and show you the full scope of my compulsive devotion, physically. You could literally not be close enough. _I'm just. a. man._ My self-control isn't infinite. And you? You didn't think further than your nose. So eager to give what was wanted with no thought of what consequences that might have. Just take that day when you slept between me and Sean and you presented to me when you felt I had an erection. What do you think would have happened when Sean woke up from me knotting or siphoning you? He rarely sleeps deeply and his hearing is nearly on par with Aiden's sense of smell. He might not be the best with kits and Juvies but he's damn protective. He would have attacked me on the spot. After that, I'd be expulsed for sure. How do you think the pack would react to a Patriarch making sexual advances towards minors? For any reason? Being expulsed is what would happen if they were _kind_. More likely, they would have murdered me and buried me unburnt to keep me from joining them in the afterlife.”

“But it wouldn’t have been your fault. It would have been mine,” Marlon argues.

“It _is_ your fault,” Jed says in frustration. “But blame doesn’t matter because no matter what our nature or instinct tells us to do we’re still responsible for our own actions. _Always_.” He pulls out to flip Marlon onto his back then lies down and pushes in again, as if he can’t talk about this unless they’re connected as closely as possible. Maybe he can’t, considering how he frames Marlon’s head with his arms to lean their foreheads together to share breath. “And then you presented. And there was something wrong with you. And Jane pointed out that it could be molestation and I…” He falls quiet and swallows. “Anytime you were near it reminded me of how close I came to do the unthinkable and how much worse the damage would have been.”

Marlon growls. “Fuck you. I’m not broken. I’m not broken! Stop saying I am. And you know what? If I’m broken _you_ didn’t hecking break me. I wasn’t molested because you can’t decide how I experienced something. And whatever it is you think is broken in me was already that way or I wouldn’t have been able to bring you back as I did. Did you ever think of that? I would have skunked the moment you started siphoning straight from my neck. Did you think of that? Did you?”

Jed closes his eyes but doesn’t answer.

“I’m not broken,” Marlon repeats. “But you all made me feel like I was. If it wasn’t for Arvid coming around, I’d still be sleeping around with whomever to make you all feel comfortable no matter how much it made my skin crawl. I need very strong scent attraction or to love someone deeply to want to poke my penis in them. How is that being broken?”

“At least you got over the hangup about being knotted,” Jed mumbles, proving that Marlon isn’t getting through to him.

“No. I still don’t like it and don’t want it. But I’ve always been okay with taking _your_ knot.” He pauses and presses his lips together to a tight little line for a moment. “And I was okay with taking Finn’s knot,” he admits. Maybe it’s because they’re both Patriarchs? They’ve had long discussions during the week while being knotted together. He’s told Jed everything about Finn’s plans and his methods but Jed’s still not convinced.

Jed shifts to kiss him. Marlon grabs his head with both hands to stop him from withdrawing, deepening the kiss. By now he knows it will take a minute tops of tasting each other’s tongues before something in Jed ignites to make him start thrusting to pump Marlon full of his semen and lock them together. This time is no different.

“You’re the broken one,” Marlon mutters and clings to Jed once Jed’s knotted inside of him.

Jed laughs. A bitter and desperate sound. “Truer words have never been said,” he says then sits up, pulling Marlon onto his thighs so Marlon sits on his lap with arms still wrapped around his shoulders and neck. “Marlon, I want you to owe me a lie.”

Marlon frowns. “That’s a strange sentence. You either owe someone or not.”

Jed shakes his head. “Nobody ever owes you shit unless they accept the debt and have given their word.”

“Then what’s the lie?”

“That you don’t tell anyone you lost your bond and that I spent a full week making love to you to get it back.”

Marlon chuckles. “I promise I won’t tell anyone in the pack that doesn’t already know.”

Jed narrows his eyes hearing the hecking huge loophole Marlon left to be able to speak freely with Arvid about it. But Jed doesn’t remark on it. Instead, he simply says “Thank you,” and leaves it at that.

* * *

A week of getting fucked raw makes walking a sore and awkward affair. It was worth it, though. Aiden nearly cries from relief when he smells the pack bond. So indeed, worth it.

Coming home he gets the shock of a lifetime as a gorgeous woman comes running towards him. Clara throws herself in his arms and wraps both arms and legs around him. She smells like a Juvie still but she’s a woman. She’s got hips and tits and she’s wearing the tightest Omega pants Marlon’s ever seen. Her eyes are darkened with sooty makeup and her hair is long except for the sides that are shaved with vague patterns. “Holy hell, Clara! What the heck have they been feeding you?” he asks and rubs his neck affectionately against hers.

Clara yips delightedly. “I’ve grown, I know. Aiden thinks I’ll start presenting within weeks. Where have you been?”

“Undercover.” If Aiden thinks that then she’s already in the first stages of presenting and he can smell it even if no one else can. Marlon tries not to panic about thinking of Clara getting wanderlust. “Why are you dressed like sex? A noseblind Alpha wouldn’t know you’re a Juvie.”

Clara sniggers and leans back far enough for Marlon to see how low cut her blouse is within the bodice she’s wearing over it. Her eyes twinkle with mischief. “The little innocent girl shtick stopped working so I switched it up. People get uncomfortable and nervous and I can work with that. But don’t worry about noseblind Alphas, a broken nose or a knee to the groin gets the message through just fine.” She winks at him with a shiteating grin, teething her canines.

Marlon laughs, happiness bubbling up from deep inside. He nuzzles her and kisses her temple. “I’ve missed you, squirt.”

She purrs in contentment. “Missed you too. Was beginning to worry you wouldn’t make it home before your bond faded.”

Marlon’s stomach twists in knots. “Pfft. You know I always come home. Don’t you?”

“Yeah. I know.” Clara’s so content and certain that Marlon relaxes. Her faith in him is as unshakable as his own faith in Arvid returning to him.

Jane flat out punches him in the face and wordlessly roars when Marlon meets her. “Where the hell have you been?!”

Jane’s fury stings his nose and makes him sneeze once. “I went undercover,” he answers and dries his nose with the back of his sleeve. He’s going to get a black eye from that punch but hitting back doesn’t even cross his mind.

“I NEVER AUTHORIZED YOU TO DO THAT!”

“You didn’t have to since I never asked,” Marlon quips, lips pulling into a lopsided smirk.

Jane’s eyes narrow. She’s red-faced from anger. “How dare you,” she growls.

“I’m a very brave man.”

This time Jane’s punch makes him stagger and nearly fall. He’s disoriented for several seconds.

“You’re on so thin ice you’re already swimming,” Jane grits out holding a finger warningly by his face, then pulls him in for a quick hug.

Marlon rubs his temple against her affectionately. “I’ve missed you, mom.”

“Don’t even try,” Jane grumbles but squeezes a little harder before letting go.

Seeing Anna again is even more staggering than Jane’s last punch was. He hears Sandra say, “That’s your papa. You see him?” and turns around to see Sandra stand with a wide-eyed toddler holding onto her leg. Anna was tiny still when he left. It hits him in the gut how many of her milestones he's missed. She's chubby and standing with a finger in her mouth, neck bent shyly smelling nervous. “You want to go say hi to your papa?" Sandra asks. Anna sidesteps to hide behind her leg but keeps looking curiously at him while Jane backs away to allow the greeting.

Marlon coos softly and promptly sits down on the floor. He purrs soothingly. He's aware that he has an audience of several pack members but the only important person in the room is the dandelion-fluff redhead clinging to Sandra's leg. “Hey, my little heartbeat,” he coos. "I've missed you, precious. Every day I have thought of you. You own me, you know that, little Love? You are my little angel. My Wayfinder, guiding me home when I got lost. I love you with every breath I take and every beat of my heart. It's all yours, Anna.”

Uncertainly, Anna steps out from cover. She looks up at Sandra for confirmation and gets an encouraging smile and a nod. Anna waddles two steps. She stops holding on to her own fingers in front of her as she looks at Marlon. Indecisive and anxious.

He smiles, soft and vulnerable. Of course, she doesn't remember him. He's been away for two-thirds of her life. He’s just as dumb as his own parents. He should have stayed here instead of taking their cue to skip off. They’d said they did it for his sake. He understands them now but he’ll never forgive them for it. He flares.

Anna's eyes go wide as she suddenly recognises him by the colour of his flare. She squees, flapping her hands excitedly, scent going from nervous to elated. She comes thundering to throw herself in his arms. He laughs at the pure joy exploding in his heart and buries his nose by her shoulder. She rubs her temple against him to mark him up and it breaks something within. He’s beyond word, reduced to primal communication, purring and chirping his love for her, eyes stinging and overflowing. He hadn’t wanted to leave Finn but with his daughter wrapped in his arms, he realises he really wanted to come home.

* * *

A few weeks go by in a flurry. It’s irksome to find out that he truly has lost most of the precious trust he’d gained before he left. There are a few people still in his corner but there are others who treat him as an intruder they have to tolerate. He doesn’t tell Jane Sean was part of the scheme, Jed and Sandra are the only ones who get that truth from him. Even with Sean arguing for his sake, it’s hard to convince the pack that there really is a conspiracy to get rid of Packrunning. Even those who believe him have trouble believing Coombs is a threat or that anyone could be a threat to the Williams pack. They see themselves as untouchables. With good reason. Coombs is tiptoeing around packs like theirs and the Talons due to how rich and powerful they are.

Keith and his parents hear him out. It’s easier to make them believe him. Progs are pretty darn persecuted by now and they move about outside of the compound so there have been incidents. Marlon didn’t know it until Keith told him, but Aiden had taken it upon himself to put Keith under his protection. Prog or not, he’d made every Alpha in the Alpha house responsible for seeing that Keith would suffer no harassment. Marlon would be grateful―he has no doubt Aiden did that for Marlon’s sake―except Keith also admits to having slept with Aiden several times, making a starry-eyed comment about red eyes. Marlon isn’t sure how he manages to keep the seething jealousy and anger from his scent. He doesn’t say anything about it, though.

Laurent and Malicia believe him. So do the Swifts and the Jayhawks. The Hales are split. They’re willing to believe him, but just like his own pack, they don’t believe they can be touched. Again, they have a good reason. They’ve grown to almost a 1000 members and they don’t give a shit about the law. They’re powerful, ruling the slums with an iron hand. They’re not disregarding the draft notice completely. But they solely plan to let members enlist to get combat experience and then call them home.

The draft notice is interesting to Marlon because not everyone is taken to combat. People are assigned tasks to keep life going as ‘undisturbed’ as possible. That apparently meant 20 people who were appointed to care for the Williams pack property and kit-rearing alongside the few Os left in the pack. Jane and Sandra are amongst the few since they’ve got kits under the age of five. That’s good, since Sandra is more than capable of handling the business side of things and the front is close enough for Jed to dabble. But the pack doesn’t get to choose who is assigned to help them at home. Marlon sticks around to meet their new staff, incredibly suspicious. He instantly realises he was right to be suspicious when their new staff arrives. Every single one of them are Conservatives. He reminds himself that Coombs doesn’t handpick people, he pulls strings and makes pieces fall into place by themselves. Most likely, these people don’t know they’re pawns in a game of chess, but they’ll be influencing the kits so the next generation Williamses will grow up with strong Conservative influences. Finn plays a long game and here’s him taking the same route that was taken in the Napa County.

The O who’s been put in charge is a woman his own age. Marlon squares up with her. She’s gorgeous, looking almost as good as she smells. “What’s your name?”

“Naomi, Sir.”

“You’re fully aware that we are a pack and you’re on pack property, something we’d normally never allow?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He tilts his head to offer his neck in introduction. Naomi steps up to his and scents, then offers her own neck, hands behind her back. After he’s scented her he says, “I want you to siphon me. And any time I come home while you’re still here, I will require you to siphon me.”

She’s suddenly anxious and uncomfortable. “Will you demand to siphon me too, Sir?”

Marlon shakes his head. “No. Not unless you ask me to. But I will claim you - mark you up as my own every time we meet on our property. When you no longer work here, I will stop doing that.”

She looks and smells troubled. “Does that mean that if I meet my truemate―”

He cuts her off. “If you meet your truemate you’ll mate him, I have no doubt. And if he’s on this property I will claim him as well. If you have kits, I will claim them too. As long as you’re infringing on my property, you belong to me in the same way my pack does. That’s the only way I can allow a trespasser.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“If you can’t agree to this you need to contact whoever assigned you to this task and tell them you can’t do the job. I won’t force myself on you but I won’t accept your presence unless you agree to be claimed.”

Naomi’s lips quirk up in a little smile. “I consent to the claiming, Sir. Mother once explained to me that packs regard their homes the same way we regard our beds. If i was forced to sleep with someone I wasn’t allowed to choose myself, I’d want to make demands too.”

“Your mother wasn’t too far off. Do you know why you’re here?”

“I was assigned here, Sir.”

“But do you know why?”

Naomi looks uncertain and gives a little shake of her head.

“Then I’ll tell you why. There is a very powerful man working to get rid of all the Packrunners and Progs in this country, us included. But he’s intelligent enough to realise that can’t be done by violence. So you and the rest of the people assigned to work under you, are here to make sure our kits grow up to be Conservatives. That’s something I strictly forbid. I understand you’ve been charged with educating them?”

“Yes, Sir. I studied to become a teacher. But I have no intention to try to convert anyone.”

“That’s good. But if you enforce mandatory prayers, you will tell them to pray to Athena or any other god they choose. You’ll teach them of all religions. You will not downtalk any designation, not even Progs. You will talk about Packrunning in a positive matter. And you will be responsible to see to that everyone working for you do the same. There will be unpleasant consequences if you don’t. I’ll give you a list of books to read and you’ll reinforce the ideas in them to our kits. If we don’t have those books you’ll acquire them and we’ll pay for them. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.” She hesitates. “Sir? Are we allowed to pray to the One while we’re here?”

“Naturally. The Light, or as she also was called, the Wayfinder, is originally a pack god that led travellers and those lost, home again. We don’t dictate other people’s faith. If you feel lost, pray to her to your heart’s content.” Marlon chuckles when Naomi’s forehead wrinkles in uncertainty and confusion. “I’ve studied the scripture. I’ve seen several versions of it, including a copy of the origin-documents. I’d be happy to tell you all about the Light and how the faith evolved over time from being a pack god amongst many to what it is today, if it interests you. But for now, I want you to know that you’re allowed to keep any faith as long as you do not try to impose those beliefs onto any of us.”

“Yes, Sir. I won’t.”

Marlon likes her. He doesn’t trust her, but he likes her. It’s a start. There’s two-way scent attraction between them too. He knows that because of her reaction when she first siphons then stands still to let him mark her up. He can smell both arousal and a little bit of slick. Neither of them acknowledges it.

They leave for West Point the day after. Some of the pack members are sent straight to the front, but he, Aiden, Dave and a couple of others are bound for boot camp. Just like his alias James had been privileged enough to gain an officer’s rank by virtue of his status, any Williams could gain that too. They’re asked when they arrive if that’s what they want. Dave says no straight off the bat but he and Aiden say yes, which means they’re given additional training. It’s very clear why they have this privilege without even having to pay for it. They’re far ahead in their education both when it comes to tactics and combat. It’s almost ironic that when Marlon finishes his training, he graduates with the same rank as ‘James Carhartt’ had.

Then they’re shipped off to Canada to fight.

He still misses Finn.

* * *


	26. The Camp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon and Aiden are heading towards one of the local pack camps to restock and get new orders when Marlon catches the most incredible scent he's ever smelt. Aiden also catches a scent. One that Marlon's too distracted to pick up on that harbingers bad news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for torture aftermath. Some things are a bit more graphic than I usually write. We don't get to see the actual torture happen, but the aftermath is bad and graphic enough. Sorry about that.

* * *

They're sneaking along, spread out sparsely, moving in pairs. The forest is moist from the earlier rains and smells of pine, damp moss and mushrooms. A few rays of sunshine find their way through the dense canopy. Aiden's in the lead. Marlon's senses are on high alert. He's taken to war like a duck to water, but two weeks ago he'd nearly been killed in these woods. Someone with claws like razors had almost gotten him at night. If he hadn't tripped he'd been dead. The claws had cut halfway through his ribs and his side is still aching. He's a bit afraid since then, reliving the moment in his sleep. The person had had the most effective scent blockers he’d ever come across. That’s what scares him the most. Usually, you could get hints of an enemy moving about since scent blockers wear off quickly enough and have to be reapplied. That came in extra handy when paired up with Aiden who would pick up the scent before the enemy’s nose had told him it had to be reapplied. Ironically, the people best at using scent blockers without a gap in the effect were Progs since they reapplied trusting only timing rather than their noses.

Suddenly, Marlon catches a scent, and all else is forgotten. He sniffs the air and turns in the direction of the scent, following it to a marking left on a tree. He presses his nose against the marking and inhales deeply, closing his eyes. His heart flutters and his belly makes elated summersaults. It’s the most beautiful O has ever smelt. He keeps sniffing, rubbing his own neck on both sides of the markings possessively, telling the world he’s chosen this O as his own. His glands leak profusely, secretion rubbing off on the coarse bark.

“Mar?” Aiden sounds terrified. “Jinkies, Mar! You scared the heck out of me! I turned around and you were gone. After what happened two weeks ago I thought― What are you doing? Mar? _Marlon_? Crap.” 

Marlon doesn’t have to open his eyes to know Aiden’s wearing a fed up expression. His scent goes from fearful to annoyed in a heartbeat as soon as he realises what’s up with Marlon. “She’s the most beautiful O in the world. I’m going to mate her,” he tells Aiden dreamily.

“ _He_ ,” Aiden corrects. “And if you keep standing like that you won’t get the chance to meet him. We’re going in the same direction they were.”

Marlon opens his eyes to look at his brother suspiciously. “Are you sure? You’re not just saying that to make me come along?” 

Aiden makes an impatient eye-roll. “I’m not noseblind, Mar. We’ve been a day behind them for a week. Those dead Unionists we came upon? Your boy and his crew took them out. Most likely he’s heading for the mountain pass just like us. Now _come on_.”

* * *

The Canadians fighting in the mountains aren't part of the Canadian army. Instead they’re a bunch of local packs waging guerilla warfare on the Union and cooperating with both the American and Canadian armies. They’ve got several camps set up in the forest and mountains, bases for either army to use. Infantry came through the camps on their way to other places, or they could be stationed in the camps to help with the guerilla warfare, often fighting the mercenary companies that were as adept as they were at the cat and mouse game. Marlon and Aiden are finally closing in on one of the base camps. On their way here markings had gotten more frequent. From the markings Marlon had learned that they're on pack territory now, that his mate-to-be is born in that pack but no longer have a pack bond: a wandering O. Of course, in a war like this he lingers in the area to drive the enemy out.

“ ** _FUCK!_** "

Aiden's curse makes Marlon jump, raising his rifle to quickly look around with his heart in his throat. Finding nothing out of order he turns to stare at Aiden completely baffled. He's never ever heard Aiden say fuck before. Marlon does it fairly often these days. Living with Coombs and hanging with Sean made the word a part of Marlon's vocabulary. But Aiden? Aiden doesn't like the word. It's too obscene and harsh for him. Something must be really wrong for him to swear like that. Aiden's lips compress into a thin line. He looks seriously at Marlon, draws breath to say something, changes his mind and keeps staring at Marlon with a deeply troubled frown. Marlon raises his eyebrows questioningly, mouthing ‘ _What?_ ’. 

Aiden hesitates again before he speaks. “Mar, I want you to remain calm. Whatever meets us in the camp. Just keep your head on your shoulders and think before you act, okay?”

Marlon frowns in confusion.

"And flare. Whatever you do, keep flaring. I don't want anyone mistaking you for a Prog even for a second. Don't start any fights. Use your words, okay? Promise me.”

Marlon scoffs. "You think I'm some dumb knothead who'll pick a fight with any Alpha standing too close to my intended mate?”

Aiden grimaces, is on his way to say something but yet again stops himself to scrutinize Marlon with a grim face. “Of course not," he says after a too long pause. “Then it won't be too difficult to promise not to start a fight, will it?”

"Fine. I solemnly swear not to start a fight.”

Aiden doesn't look very convinced but nods all the same.

The closer to camp they get the noisier the woods get - bird calls and low rumbles. Aiden and Marlon respond with bird calls and rumbles of their own, giving their position and identity long before they're challenged for the first time. When the first guard melts out of the underbrush they've already passed several others. It's a common technique to let people pass the first lines of defence so you could cut off the retreat for anyone hostile. Without Aiden's nose, Marlon would have been oblivious to several unseen guards. They introduce themselves by their pack rather than by military rank and get to know that they are on the Shurley territory. 

By now Marlon's completely fixated on the Omega whose markings he'd smelled. He's tracking him and if it hadn't been for Aiden an enemy could have stepped out right behind him reeking of days of sweat and Marlon wouldn't have noticed. He's tracking the O's footsteps with growing excitement. Closer. Marlon starts deep-purring. He stops dead realising he doesn't have his usual gifts. Aiden waits grim and patient while Marlon divests himself of his backpack to rummage through it for a suitable gift. Maybe ammunition? It'd mean he himself will have to resort to hand-to-hand combat but he's more comfortable with that anyway. Although, he doesn't know if his ammunition will fit his mate's firearms or if he even _has_ firearms. Maybe he should give him his rifle and handgun? If he does, Jed and Sean will chew him out. Food? The food rations taste like crap and they’re heading for camp partly to restock, so it would be a fair assumption it wouldn’t cover any need his mate has. He's at loss and makes a frustrated noise.

“He used leaves to dry himself last time he defecated,” Aiden says. “Maybe you should give him some of that fancy toilet paper your spoiled ass has been hoarding.”

Marlon looks up at him. Sometimes he’s struck by how incredibly different their worlds are solely because Aiden’s sense of smell is so extraordinary. Their past everyday life might not have been, since in the city a great part of the day is spent trying to _ignore_ nose-input to filter away unnecessary scents. But since they’ve been in the field both their noses are at work 24/7 and for Aiden that paints a picture of their surroundings vastly different from what anyone else in the pack could discern now that aunt Luci had died. Just the fact that he’s known about the O for a week proves that. “Aiden. I love you.”

Aiden’s face goes from grim and apprehensive to amused and fond for a moment before once again looking like he’s expecting trouble. His scent is no indication of why. They all smell faintly of anxiety, fatigue, and fear these days.

Marlon digs up two of his precious rolls of toilet paper, shoulders his backpack again and hugs the paper rolls to his chest. He starts deep-purring again as soon as they get going.

They’re challenged by another guard. Marlon’s so fixated on the strong scent-trail of his mate he almost doesn’t stop. Aiden grabs him by the back of his collar to hold him back. “We’re Aiden and Marlon Williams of the Long Island Williams pack. I apologise for my brother, he’s been like this since he caught the scent of a male wandering O from your pack.”

The guard who’d been eyeing Marlon dubiously grins. “That’d be Charles Shurley. He’s called Chuck and you’ll find him by the infirmary.”

“He’s hurt?” Marlon asks worriedly, horrified at the thought of losing Charles before they’re even properly introduced.

The guard chuckles. “No. His sister needed a few stitches. Good luck. He’s turned down every other suitor this far,” he says and steps aside to let them pass. 

Charles is a good name, Marlon thinks. Chuck, not so much. 

Even though they can hear the camp, they don’t see it until they crest a little hill and pass through an opening in dense shrubbery between a narrow gap in a steep canyon. The camp consists of many large tents set up in a large widening in the canyon. There are guards placed in the mountains above and the camp itself is bustling with activity. Marlon heads straight towards the tent with the red cross on, uncaring if Aiden follows or not. The sun is shining and Marlon spots his target sitting on a makeshift bench outside of the first aid tent, eyes closed and face tipped up to catch the warming rays. He's short, has light brown curly hair that sticks up haphazardly, and a short beard. It’s okay. Marlon can tolerate a beard. Charles scents the air then opens his eyes to look right at Marlon with incredibly blue eyes. Marlon smiles with teethed canines as he approaches, intensifying his purr. Charles keeps inhaling deeply. Marlon can pick up a positive mix of emotions from him, along with some anxiety that grows the closer Marlon gets. Just in case Charles finds his size intimidating and that’s what’s making him nervous Marlon goes to his knees and scoots himself forward the last couple of feet. He bows down and tilts his head up to keep eye-contact, then holds forth his two toilet rolls with his flared eyes hopeful.

“Oh. Um, That’s. That’s unusual. You’re not a mind reader, are you? Um. Thank. Thank you,” Charles half stutters and takes the offered gifts to stare at them as if he doesn’t know what to do with them for a moment only to hug them possessively to his chest the next beat. “Why don’t you sit here? No need to, um. Get your clothes dirty,” he says and pats the bench beside him with an awkward smile.

If Marlon wasn’t already smiling so wide and purring he’d have laughed. He’s already covered in mud after a week in the forest with only the occasional half-wash in small streams. To minimize your scent you rub mud on yourself. Marlon washed off most of what was on his face and arms by the last stream since they were on mostly safe territory, but his clothes are a different matter. Nevertheless, he takes Charles up on the offer and slides up on the bench beside him. 

“So, what. What’s the angle here? Um. Looking for a quick hump and dump before going back to the frontline?” Charles asks, pulling forth a bag from under the bench. He stuffs the paper rolls in the bag then shoves the bag back under the bench.

Marlon shakes his head. “I’m Marlon Williams of the Long Island Williams pack. It’s my intention to court you, Charles Shurley, for a mateship. I want to spend my life with you, father your kits and take care of you for as long as you live.”

Charles huffs and smiles at his lap. “Oh. Um. You’re. You’re not playing around. Wow.” He looks up again smile getting wider, hands rubbing nervously at his thighs. Marlon tilts his head to the side to offer his neck for scenting. Charles leans in and sniffs, then he pushes his nose against Marlon’s neck and inhales deeply over and over, leaning into it. Marlon would wait until he got permission to scent back but Charles is currently melting against him so Marlon takes a chance by putting his own nose against Charles neck. Charles’ glands are leaking as profusely as his own. His nose is instantly smeared with silky substance that smells like heaven and everything that makes life worth living. “Amara isn't going to like this..." Charles mumbles.

“Do I need to ask him or her for permission to court you? Personally, the only person whose opinion I care about is yours. But if you require me to ask someone else, or fight someone, point at them and I'll do it,” Marlon declares drowsily.

He can feel that unfortunate beard tickle his neck when Charles smiles. “I'll remember that. But no. Amara's my sister. We're, um, you could say we're a package deal.”

"I need to court her too?” Marlon asks against Charles’ throat. His lips moving against the sensitive skin makes Charles shiver which in turn multiplies the butterflies in Marlon's belly.

“No. If she doesn't like you she can go find a mate of her own or suffer in silence,” Charles chuckles. Then he licks at Marlon's gland to taste him and all sense left in Marlon's brain goes flying out the window. He pulls Charles closer, holding him while sucking at his gland as if his life depended on it. He might have been ashamed of his own presumptuousness if it wasn't for Charles’ reaction. Charles makes a needy noise and clings, pushing him down to half-lie on the bench, held up by his backpack with Charles on top. They make out, hunger increasing with the mounting smell of arousal and slick in the air. Marlon's high on it - joy popping like bubbles beneath his skin, heart dancing elatedly and belly swooping.

A shrill whistle and a yelled “Hey, Chuck!" tears Charles’ attention from him partially. Charles lifts his head breathing roughly, but pushes Marlon’s face back against his neck when Marlon too stops to see what Aiden wants. That’s fine. Marlon isn’t interested in his brother’s doings right now and Charles is giving him free rein to lick, kiss, and bite at his neck to the point where his scent has Marlon shrouded from the inside and out.

“I’m Aiden Williams, brother to the man with the goofy lovestruck grin underneath you,” Aiden says when he’s got Charles’ attention. “He’s been tracking you like a compass needle since first whiff and while I in my capacity of a brother, frequently classifies him as an idiot, he’s anything but. He’s smart, resourceful, tenacious, great with kits, prone to grand gestures, loyal to a fault and loves with every inch of his heart. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for a loved one. Now, all of those are great qualities, and for a mate you could do a lot worse. _But_. He’s been massively distracted by you, and the moment he no longer is, he’ll make a discovery that’ll upset him. All those qualities I listed? They’ll be working against him. He’s promised me he wouldn’t start a fight but he didn’t say anything about not starting a pack war. The last thing we want is another war between us and the Shurleys. I need to go rapport to our superiors so if you could just try to keep him calm until I get back to babysit him, that would be great.”

“Sure. I can do that,” Charles answers.

Marlon lifts his head to frown at Aiden. “What the heck are you talk― _mbff!_ ” Charles smushes Marlon’s face back to his neck and goes back to sucking on Marlon’s neck. Whatever has Aiden in a twist it can wait.

15 minutes later Aiden is a distant memory. So is the war, Conservatives, or anything that isn’t the gorgeous, short man on top of him. ‘ _I love you_ ’ Marlon declares with a soft cooing noise. 

“You don’t even know me,” Charles chuckles breathlessly.

‘ _Mine! All mine!_ ’ Marlon growls possessively, hands wandering inside Charles’ clothes, one hand fanning out over his back, the other in his pants, pushing into his wet and willing hole rhythmically with a finger.

Charles pushes up his ass to meet the finger every time Marlon pushes in, his own hands gripping Marlon’s ass firmly to make him rut up from the bench. His eyes are closed and his breath laboured. “I don't usually do this thing…” he says. “Give me a couple of days at least, to pretend I'm not a complete mess for you already...” 

A couple of days is an aeon of time. But Marlon intends to give this man his whole life so if he needs a couple of days with solid courting then Marlon will deliver. It's amongst the hardest things he's done to pull his hand out of Charles’ pants and push Charles an arm’s length away. 

“What’s wrong?” Charles asks, suddenly alarmed, blinking in confusion.

Marlon tries really hard to form words for a beat, failing spectacularly. Instead, he makes a confused jumble of noises. ‘ _Mine. Love you. Lying in wait. Patience. Identify yourself._ ’ Charles frowns in bewilderment, cheeks arousal-red, breath heavy and golden flare strong and gorgeous. Marlon holds up a finger asking him to hold on while Marlon closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths to descramble his brain and catch his breath. “I have patience. I can wait and get to know you before we do anything,” he finally manages to say and opens his eyes. He smiles encouragingly. “So who are you? What do you do? What are your passions? Your interests?”

Charles relaxes and scoots off him, pulling him up with him so they’re sitting with their sides pressed together. “Oh. I’m a writer,” he says with a proud smile, still a little breathless. 

“Me too,” Marlon enthuses. “What do you write?”

“Fiction. Horror and suspense mostly.” 

“Anything I might have read?” He hasn’t read an awful lot in those genres but you never know.

Charles huffs an awkward little laugh and looks at his lap. “No. I…” He rubs his thighs and looks up again. He’s smiling but his cheeks are turning redder and his scent tints with discomfort. “I’ve sent in a couple of manuscripts but they’ve all been rejected this far. How about you? You said you’re a writer too?”

Ouch. Normally, Marlon likes to hold forth his writing as a point of pride. But he’d be shooting himself in the foot besting his mate-to-be. It’s different from physical feats. It’s fine to be stronger, more agile, a better fighter than an O you want to impress. It shows that you’ll be able to protect your O when he or she is vulnerable like during or after a pregnancy. But being better at your partner’s passion? You’ll wound their pride and possible break their confidence. It’s like with kits when they show you something they’ve made. You ‘Oooh’ and ‘Aaah’ as if you’re incredibly impressed no matter how shitty the bracelet (or whatever) you’re presented with is. 

Marlon waves a hand dismissively. “A couple of history books. I’m not really good at writing fiction,” he lies. “Can I read something you’ve written? I can help you publish if you want.”

“Sure. I― wait.” Charles leans forward and pulls the bag out from under the bench. He rummages around in the bag then takes up a manuscript that he hands to Marlon. It’s called ‘Witch’s Canyon’ and Charles watches him with anticipation as he starts to read.

It only takes a few pages for Marlon to know why the manuscript has been rejected. It’s not that the story is bad, per se. But the writing isn’t great. The characters have charm and the dialogue is funny and clever but the parts that need convey suspense don’t speed up. The pacing needs adjustment. There are all these clichés and stereotypes and small things that together amount to a dullness in the reading experience that rightfully shouldn’t be there. He finishes a chapter before he speaks. “Your dialogue is brilliant,” he says. “But…” he looks up to meet Charles’ intense gaze. “Look, I don’t write fiction very well but I’m good at editing. If you want constructive criticism I’d love to read everything through at some point and make comments in the margins for adjustments that would make the story even better. You know, like grammar, pacing, things like that. But if you don’t want that? I’ll see to that you get published anyway, as is.” It’s possible Charles would be hurt or feel like his writing style is intruded upon if he’s subjected to the same pointers and critique Marlon’s been, growing up. Even if he gets a yes it’s better to wait until after they’re mated, just to be sure he doesn’t alienate Charles.

By Charles’ expression, Marlon suspects he might be right that this is touchy for him. “Yes. Sure. That. That’d be great.” Charles presses his lips into a tight, brief smile. “Who is your favourite character this far?”

“Chang, by far.”

Charles face scrunches up in bemusement. “ _Chang_? Why?”

“His sarcasm is on point. I feel like I can relate to him. He’s grumpy and just wants to get home to his mate, stuck in the situation with sarcasm as his only outlet. He still helps and does what he can to make the situation better for everyone despite his commentary. So he’s a decent guy who just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that makes you root for him. He’s not an asshole. Unlike Carl.”

“But what about Jack? You don’t like Jack?”

Marlon shrugs. “He’s too perfect. Everything about him is perfect and therefore there’s nothing to make him particularly interesting. He’s too nice, too smart, too… too everything good. And his thoughts are just as nice as his actions. It’d be more interesting if he’d been thinking mean thoughts while he was saying all those nice things. Or if he’d displayed any flaws. Heck, even a limp might have made him more interesting. On the other hand, if he’d been limping one would just assume he’d gotten that limp saving a kit from being run over by a car or something. I don’t want my heroes to be flawless because then I can’t relate to them. I’ve got flaws―” Marlon cuts himself off and leans closer with a conspiratorial look. “I don’t have flaws. I’m perfect and you should definitely mate me,” he says, startling a laugh out of Charles and feeling smug about it. He leans upright again. “But if I did have flaws, I’d want the people I’m supposed to root for to be like me. Plus, already in the first chapter there are things about Jack that doesn’t make sense.”

“Like what?” Charles’ body language and scent are open and interested now.

“You described his pack as fairly small and poor. They’re simple farmers. He’s newly presented and this is the first time he’s left the pack’s small holdings. How did he get so good at fighting? How did he learn to read and write so well? How does he know so much about…” Marlon proceeds to list several other unexplainable things. “Getting good at fighting takes time and requires a lot of practice. From what we’ve learned this far none in the pack could have taught him and their life on the farm was a quiet one with no intruders and pack wars. He’s the only one in his age so it couldn’t have been play fighting. It’s details like that that bug me and that makes Jack less interesting. If you’d described him as coming from a pack like mine―rich, full of warriors, good education―or a pack that had to suffer through hardship, then it’d be different. But you didn’t. You explicitly stated how nice and quiet his life had been up to this point. So that’s why I like Chang the most.”

Charles chuckles ruefully and scratches his head absentmindedly. “Chang dies the next chapter.” 

Marlon bursts out laughing. “Of course he does,” he says affectionately and gives Charles a loving temple rub.

Charles grins. “Maybe it’s a good idea to let you write commentary. What do you think of…” he keeps asking questions about Marlon’s opinions of what he’s just read and their conversation flows easily. But suddenly Marlon hears a low sound that makes him freeze mid-sentence, eyes going wide, blood draining from his face and his heart suddenly pounding in panic. It’s a sound he has only heard once, many years ago. He lifts his nose to scent the air and, yep. There it is. A familiar scent that Aiden definitely picked up on and that with a 100% surety is the reason he’s been acting strange. Marlon stands up and drops fangs without conscious thought.

“Where is he?” He doesn't mean to sound as hard and cold as he does.

“Who?"

Marlon withholds a growl. “I'm sorry. I―” he turns away and starts following the scent and sound. He hopes he can repair any damages he's doing by walking away from Charles. It can't be helped. That faint sound he's hearing is a pack distress call he can't ignore.

It takes him a couple of minutes to track down his target. Arvid sits with his back slumped against a thick tree, arms chained behind the trunk. He’s been stripped down to his underwear and he’s been so badly hurt he’s barely recognizable, pale as a sheet from blood-loss where he isn’t mottled black-blue-red-green or covered with untreated injuries. The chains look to be the only thing holding him up. He’s blindfolded and gagged and the strips of cloth are both soaked in dried blood. Marlon’s so enraged that one of the guards sneezes repeatedly as he approaches. Marlon reminds himself he gave a Packrunner’s promise to Aiden not to start a fight. On the other hand, the guards are relaxed and anything but vigilant here in the middle of the camp so if he was to shoot them it’d be an execution, not a fight.

One of the guards chirps a friendly greeting as he approaches. “Hey. Williams, right? You Sean’s brother?” the woman asks, everything about her demeanour friendly.

“Sean’s my uncle. You’ve captured a mercenary,” he states with eyes fixated on Arvid. Arvid’s continuously making that weak, pitiful pack distress call - too silently to be heard far. You can hear it further here than you could when he was hanging in their dungeon but it’s still not a sound made to call for help but to call a pack on the other side of the veil, long dead and gone.

The guard mistakes his anger to be directed at the mercenary prisoner rather than her and her companions. “Yes, we did. We almost got a full squad of them but then this fucker came out of nowhere. He got two of us and managed to free his squad members before we had him subdued.”

“You’ve tortured him,” Marlon states. He sounds calm but in reality, he wants nothing more than to obliterate every person remotely responsible for Arvid’s state.

“Yeah,” another guard says. “Fat lot of good it did us. We couldn’t get him to talk.”

“Hah. Says you,” the first guard tells her companion before looking back at Marlon. “He wouldn’t shut up. He kept babbling about everything but what we wanted to know. Describing strange fishes in Phu Quoc, the smell of blossoming trees in springtime Malmö, the colour of the sky in Assos. I have no idea where any of the places he talked about are located but nothing he said was any help to us.”

"At the end, he'd resorted to prayers, though,” the second guard sniggers. " _Ares, please, help me,_ " he mimics and sniggers again.

Marlon's seeing red. His chest heaves, claws taking shape, and fangs growing so long they push into and nearly break the skin of his lower lip. He's trembling with restraint, fixating the second guard with his gaze. He can see the man's lips moving but all he can hear is his own heartbeat like a wardrum in his ears. The guards start to shift and exchange nervous glances, picking up on that something is very wrong. 

Aiden’s voice rings in his head. ‘ _Use your words, okay? Promise me._ ’ It’s a good thing he hasn’t been drinking or he wouldn’t have been able to rein himself in. “Who has the key to the chains? He has to be brought to the infirmary so he doesn’t die,” he says sharply with a slight lisp due to the length of his fangs. It makes his jaw ache and he’ll have a headache later but he couldn’t make them shorter if he wanted to. Right now he’s struggling to withhold even greater shifts. Arvid is _dying_. He’s dying right in front of Marlon’s eyes. It’s a matter of hours if he doesn’t get help soon. This close he reeks of pain and blood and more pain.

“Our Main Elise has the keys. But the order was to let him sit here until he passed away and Elise is in a meeting with the area commanders and isn’t to be disturbed,” the first guard says. She smells of distress and her face shows concern and confusion. 

“Don’t care. Just get the keys. If we don’t patch him up and nurture him back to health again his company will come for him.” It isn’t even a lie, as hard as it is to come up with words. “These guys don’t leave anyone behind. If they find him alive they’ll be content not to kill or harm any more people than those who they did away with to get to him. If he’s dead? Revenge will be extracted based on how he’s been treated and _you tortured him._ Basically, my pack is safer out there in the forest than we are while we’re here as long as―” Marlon cuts himself off when he hears Arvid’s distress call get weaker and almost fall out of hearable range. He starts purring a mate’s comforting purr at Arvid just like he’d done unknowingly as a kit, distress mounting with the smell of saline coming from Arvid. The guards shift their rifles and move restlessly, uncertain and worried, still not showing him any hostility but the mate’s purr instantly tells them that there’s something else going on than just pack safety.

Arvid’s head lols in his direction, too heavy to lift. Then, he responds with a weak purr of his own - a mother’s soothing purr. Just like he’d done hanging in the dungeon. 

Marlon makes a wounded noise and pushes the guard out of the way to get to the tree. He digs his claws into the bark to make long furrows, then bites, digging his canines and pointed teeth in to tear off strips of bark heedless of any splinters lodging in his lips and gums. He repeats the process over and over, intent on shredding his way straight through the tree. He keeps making two sounds - the mate’s comforting purr in his breastbone and a pitiful clucking noise in his throat meaning ‘ _Please, don’t leave me!_ ’ He hears the guards trying to talk to him but he doesn't answer, too focused on felling the tree and not kill any pack allies. His actions have the guards stressed out of their minds.

“What are you doing?! Stop it!”

“Williams, why are you doing this? Please, talk to me.”

“Step away from the tree or I’ll shoot!”

“Perry, no!"

A gunshot goes off behind him. He barely blinks. But then he hears Aiden make the Williams distress call behind him and swiftly turns around ready to tear anyone threatening Aiden to pieces.

Aiden's pointing his handgun at the guard who'd threatened to shoot Marlon, face grim. It was his gun that had gone off but nobody's wounded so most likely he'd fired a warning shot into the air. He's flaring so brightly his pupils are barely visible. “You better lower that rifle, Shurley, or you will start another pack war between us. Not something you want to do with us already in your camp,” he says coldly.

People are running towards them, both their own pack members, Shurleys, and Packrunning soldiers from other packs. Marlon's surprised to see how many Williams members are here. 

“He's killing the tree!" The guard that had threatened to shoot Marlon exclaims as if he’s too panicked to know what he’s saying. He's young and reeks of fear and distress but lowers his rifle.

“Yes. No doubt because he's avoiding to attack you. Seeing as you have a long-standing friend of ours chained to it and he can't bite through the chain,” Aiden answers, cold, curt, controlled. Charles is standing a step behind biting his lip looking at Marlon.

“Sir,” the first guard says to Aiden. “We’re not allowed to release the prisoner without Elise’s permission. She has the keys. I―”

“I’m here. What’s going on?” a woman who’d come running says as soon as she’s close enough. Jed, Sean, and another man and woman Marlon doesn’t recognize are with her.

Aiden turns towards them, lowering his gun and addressing Sean and Jed. “Sirs, the prisoner is Arvid Mattsson.”

“ _Fuck,_ ” Sean curses at the same time as Jed holds out a hand to Elise. “Elise, the keys, please.” He looks around and yells “Can we get a medic over here!” then to Sean, “Take care of the politics of this. We don’t want this to escalate.”

Elise starts handing the keys over but Marlon turns away and goes to his knees beside Arvid, spitting out splinters and drying blood off his mouth in the same motion. He leans in to gently press his lips against Arvid’s temple, purring comfortingly. “I’m here. Hold on. I’ll take care of you,” he promises and reaches around to untie the blindfold so Arvid can see him. It proves to be futile since Arvid’s eyes are both swollen shut. Marlon hastens to remove the bloodsoaked gag since Arvid’s nose is so busted and appears to be breathing mostly through the gag. Arvid whimpers when the gag is jostled and when it comes free Marlon makes a startled, pained noise seeing the metal nails that have been driven through the side of his cheeks and into the bone or teeth below the cheekbones. Marlon can’t fucking breathe, he’s devastated, hands shaking staring in horror. He couldn’t say why the sight of the metal stuck in Arvid’s cheeks triggers him so much but his eyes begin to sting and for a moment all action inside of him flat-lines. He’s seen countless dead bodies, mutilation and horror since he was sent to the front and taken it all in stride. But this…?

But then Jed crouches down beside him and puts a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. “Mar, keep calm. Comfort your boy. This is what we do. We take care of our Os when they’re down for the count. You can cry when he’s dead or when he’s well enough to smack you on the back of your head and call you an idiot. Until then, you’re the steady rock he depends on,” Jed tells him. Marlon blinks at him and nods, swallowing thickly over the lump in his throat.

Next, Jed touches Arvid’s shoulder gently, looking him over. “Arvid? I’m Jedikiah Williams. I’m here to help you. Your Alpha is here for you too. Can you open your mouth for me so I can introduce myself properly?”

Arvid had been gasping for air but now he parts his lips with a whine of pain. The spikes in his cheeks jostle but don’t prevent him from moving his lower jaw. When Arvid’s mouth hangs open Jed rubs his neck gland to make it secrete. “Arvid, I’m going to put my finger in your mouth now, okay?” he says then gently pushes the finger past Arvid’s lips. Jed’s scent is neutral but he gives off an air of competent urgency even though he’s calm and gentle. He wiggles his finger a bit and withdraws it when Arvid siphons weakly. “Pleased to meet you, Arvid,” he says. “That’s me, Jedikiah. You can call me Jed if you want. Now your Alpha is going to put his finger in your mouth too so you can be sure he’s here. The blood on his hand comes from your gag. Nothing to worry about.”

Jed takes the gag out of Marlon’s hand and with a quick gesture conveys that he should do what Jed just did. Marlon doesn’t understand why he’s feeling so confused or why it’s so hard to think but he can still follow simple instructions. His neck is already generously covered with secretion from his interaction with Charles so he does as he’s told. Arvid’s mouth feels a lot colder than it should but Marlon could swear the scent of pain goes down a notch when Arvid siphons him.

“Good. Now I’m going to release you from the chains and bend your arms forward. After that, we’re going to move you. It will hurt, but it’ll get better afterwards,” Jed informs Arvid. He looks at Marlon with serious eyes. “Comfort him. Make sure you keep at least some physical contact but try not to hurt him too much. Just comfort him. That’s all I need from you.”

Marlon nods shakenly and leans to put his lips against Arvid’s temples again, restarting his comforting purr, not having realised he’d stopped. Jed adds a Patriarch’s all-is-well to it and scoots behind the trunk. Elise comes running (Marlon hadn’t even realised she’d gone anywhere.) to squat down beside Jed. “Did you find it?” Jed asks her while he’s at work unlocking and untangling chains.

“No. He didn’t have a tag with his name and blood type. But we have a stock of type O negative,” she answers. 

Marlon closes his eyes and listens to their conversation while focusing on the scent of Arvid. He becomes aware of Charles being nearby when he does but his world is still zoomed in like a pinprick on the contact between his lips and Arvid. His brain isn’t ready to handle more information than the most immediate things, still trying to stall over and over.

“That’ll do. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“The infirmary is pretty packed. I think it’d be better if we put him somewhere else. Plus, some of the fighters that captured him are in there. He might feel traumatized by their scent,” Elise says.

“Uh-uh. With a nose that badly broken he’s practically noseblind unless he siphons. Where can we put him?”

“You can put him in my tent. I’ve got a good bed and it’s closer than the infirmary.” That’s Charles voice. 

“Good idea,” Elise agrees. “You’ll show them the way and I’ll see to that the medical equipment needed gets there.”

Someone stands up and jogs away.

“Any broken bones?” Jed asks. 

The voice of a stranger answers. “Only his feet, Sir. We focused on pain, not maiming. But we didn’t want him to run away.”

“Did you harm his eyes?” 

“Not directly, Sir.”

It’s someone who’d been part of doing what had been done to Arvid. Marlon screws his eyes shut harder and tries not to scent who it is. Then tries to disregard _any_ input not coming from Arvid when Jed goes on to cross-examine the torturer about the damages. Arvid whimpers in pain a couple of times and Marlon does such a good job tuning everything out that he doesn’t realise people have stopped talking until Jed addresses Arvid directly.

“Arvid, you’re loose now. Marlon’s going to lift you up and carry you. Are you prepared for that?”

Arvid makes a little noise that may or may not have been affirmative. Marlon opens his eyes and Jed gestures for him to lift. He gets his arms under Arvid, carefully lifting him up in a bridal carry with help from Jed. 

“Follow me,” Charles tells him.

It isn’t far to go. There are already people waiting in the big, square tent. Charles had said it was his. To Marlon’s eyes, it’s big enough for an officer but more likely it’s because it’s Charles’ temporary home since he officially left his pack, the bed’s too big and solid for a regular camp cot and normally you’d sleep in huge, barrack-like tents as a soldier in camp. 

The bed’s been elevated and moved to the middle of the room and some things have been moved outdoors. The care is taken over by medics. These are not the highly trained doctors Marlon’s used to and they might wear protective clothing and rubber gloves but the surrounding is far from sterile. They’re still adequate for first aid and if needed a chopper will be called to take wounded to a military hospital. That only happens to the most extreme cases, though. Here in the mountains, it’s as dangerous to fly a chopper as to take your chances staying in camp. Marlon stays, sitting by the head of the bed trying not to be in the way. Jed’s there too, narrating for Arvid while they prepare the blood transfusion and clean wounds. “Arvid, we’re going to remove all the metal shards now. It’s going to hurt something fierce when we do, but get better soon after. Ready?”

Marlon barely has time to think ‘All the metal shards?’ before the first spike is pulled out of Arvid’s cheek. Arvid screams. Marlon holds him down and coos and purrs soothingly, trying not to panic. His mind is so shaken he has trouble computing any scent-input at all. It’s like his nose has completely disengaged.

“Give me the pliers, I’ll do it,” Jed tells the medic after the second spike is pulled out.

Marlon’s been pinning the medic with his gaze, getting more and more upset. It’s translated to his scent how close he is to lunging to save Arvid from the excruciating pain the pulled spikes caused.

The medic gratefully gives the pliers over. Jed looks guardedly at Marlon for a beat then leans closer to Arvid’s face. “Arvid? I’m going to remove the rest of the shards now. I’ll give you time to recuperate between each but it’ll hurt as bad as when you got them. Can you tell me you’re ready?” Arvid makes a _chrrt-chrrt_ sound that means go ahead. Jed straightens up. “Chuck. Chuck was it? Could you stand behind Marlon and restrain him or catch him if either is needed?”

“Yes, Sir.” Charles goes to stand behind Marlon. Marlon’s confused.

But then Jed says, “Arvid, give me your hand,” and when Arvid free-willingly reaches out his hand Marlon sees it. He’s got those kinds of spikes under his nails as well and that’s why his hands are all bloody. Marlon forgets how to breathe. When Jed pulls the first one out and Arvid howls in agony, jackknifing and flopping back down to hyperventilate. “Perfect. You’re doing so well, sweetheart,” Jed praises. “You’re so good. Only nine more to go, then you’ll be free. Just tell me when you’re ready. That’s it, sweetheart.” Arvid makes a _chrrt-chrrt_ noise and holds out his hand again as soon as his breathing returns to normal.

Marlon doesn’t remember what happens next. A big chunk of his memory is wiped clean. When he finally becomes aware again hours have passed. Jed sits on the other side holding Arvid’s bandaged hand, stroking sweat-matted hair out of Arvid’s face with his other hand. The tent is empty of people save the three of them. Arvid’s been cleaned, bandaged, and gotten a thick blanket around him. There’s a drip in his arm and his eyes are covered by bandages with cotton pads. He still smells of pain but not nearly as much and the first thing Marlon registers is that the three of them are laughing. Soft chuckles and a sense of calm. It’s strange, feeling yourself smiling, talking, but missing the memory of why. “Did I pass out? I can’t remember what’s happened between the first spike coming out of your finger and now.”

Arvid chuckles again. “What happened was that you held me down purring ‘I love you’ over and over directly into my skin. It felt like you were crying but I’m not sure because I can’t smell a damn thing except my own blood without siphoning. When I heard you purring while I was chained to the tree I thought I was hallucinating you. Didn’t really get that I wasn’t until I got to siphon you.”

Jed smiles softly. “Your Alpha nearly started a war over you, Sweetheart. I’m grateful he didn’t think to try using his gun to get the chains off you. I don’t think he’d have aimed his gun at the chain if he’d thought to pull it.” He looks at Marlon. “You did very well, Mar. I know how hard it is for you to control your temper and I was afraid you’d attack me when I pulled the anti-shifting shards out. But you didn’t. And you didn’t pass out, you took care of your O. It’s not that unusual for the brain to blot out traumatic events so don’t fret about your memory. Once the shards were out you kept your wits about you.”

“Anti-shifting shards?” Marlon asks.

“The spikes,” Arvid says. “Put those under nails and in the jaw and it gets too darn painful to try to shift. It was a tactically sound decision to shard me considering their infirmary is full right now because of me.” He grins and Marlon picks up a trace of contentment in his scent. “No hard feelings, though. This is war. These are the stakes we put in. So don’t go holding it against them or that new boy of yours. Chuck’s a good guy. I like him.”

Marlon sighs. “I want to mate him but I’m afraid I fucked that up by coming to your aid.”

Arvid grins again and Jed chuckles, shaking his head. “You really don’t remember the last few hours if you think that,” Jed says. “He’s on guard duty now but will be back later. Generally speaking, unless the O is into the whole truemate bull crap, seeing that you’re protective, capable and loving, won’t work against you even when you’re showing your good sides towards someone else.”

There’s a scratch against the tent flap, then Elise comes inside with Aiden on her heels. “How’s the patient doing?”

“Fit as a fiddle, fair Main,” Arvid jokes. “And I apologise for what I did to your pack, but in my defence you’d caught one of my squads and I couldn’t have that.”

Elise huffs and gives Jed a bemused little smile. “Is he always this chipper?”

“He fakes it with the best of them,” Aiden answers. “So yes.”

“Hey, Red. Looking good as always,” Arvid jokes, twisting his head in the direction of Aiden’s voice. It’s a joke since Arvid can neither smell or see him.

“I know I always say this, Arvid, but I’m really not happy to see you this time,” Aiden answers crossing his arms over his chest, lips pulling into a lopsided smile.

Arvid laughs with a burst of pain from his belly tract. “Understandable, Red. Understandable.”

“What can you tell us?” Aiden asks. It’s the same every time he meets Arvid. Straight to the point. Marlon doesn’t like it but Arvid doesn’t seem to mind.

Both Elise and Jed look surprised when Arvid starts talking―understandably, since he’s undergone torture without revealing jack shit. He gives up Union army positions, tells them of two other mercenary companies in the area and their M.O., scheduled bombings and targets. He tells them anything except things that relate to his own company directly. 

“Where were you two weeks ago?” Aiden asks.

“Down in Texas. We got paid to break people out of work camps and give aid to the packs there. They’re preparing to do a big push to end the occupation. Why?”

“Because your company has the most advanced technology in the area and Marlon nearly got killed by someone with the strongest scent blockers I’ve come across and claws like darn machetes. I tried to find the assailant for hours afterwards and I couldn’t find a spot for reapplication.”

Arvid’s smile melts off his face. He’s quiet for a bit chest heaving before he calms down. There are traces of anger in his scent. “Yeah, that was one of us,” he says at last. “He knows who Peepers is so I’m giving him the benefit of a doubt, thinking that you must have been a clear and present danger to someone in the company.” He shakes himself out of it. “Elise?”

The Shurley Main comes closer to and puts her hand on Arvid’s shoulder to show she’s there. “Yes?”

“Am I still a prisoner or am I a guest now?”

“All things considered, I’ve classified you as a guest.”

“In that case, I’m deeply sorry for any of your pack members who are about to die because I’ve got no way of communicating this to my company. They’ll come for me and you will lose people. There is nothing I can do about it. If it’s any consolation only a few guards will be lost and no vengeance will be meted out.”

Elise smirks. “They can try. Nobody gets into this camp without my sayso.”

Arvid grins but doesn’t answer. Instead, he pats Elise’s hand with his own. Marlon refrains from saying that Arvid’s company specializes in getting into impenetrable places to break people out.

“Our packs are still allied, right? Despite my undiplomatic reaction?” Marlon asks.

Both Elise and Jed nod. “If Jedikiah could forgive me for running Karen through with a sword back in the days I can forgive you for damaging a tree and Aiden for pointing a gun at my youngest son in your defense,” Elise says. Marlon had seen the scar on his grandma’s belly but never wondered about it. It’s strange to remember that Jed and Karen were part of the Canadian-American war and that the Shurleys were ‘the enemies’ back then. “We took a heavy toll back in the days when we were at war and none of us wants that again.”

“Good. With the imminent civil war at our doorstep a pack war is the last thing we need,” Marlon says.

“What civil war?” Elise and Arvid say at the same time.

“For the last time, Mar, there isn’t going to be a civil war,” Jed sighs patiently.

“No, no. I want to hear this. The Commander has been worrying about something like that happening for a while now. If you know something he doesn’t, I need to know,” Arvid says. It’s a bit eerie with how he raises his head to pin Marlon with intense focus despite his eyes being covered with bandages.

“I went undercover for a year…” Marlon tells them everything he’s uncovered, skipping out on how tightly he’d bonded to Coombs. Elise takes it seriously and wishes to discuss the matter in private with Jed. Aiden leaves when they do, and Marlon's finally alone with Arvid.

“Is Laurent still alive?" Arvid asks when they’re alone.

“He is. There was a general draft so he spent six months here in the mountains with us, but the Hales have called everyone home. We help to keep them out of jail for desertion and in return, they made a promise to help keep our remaining pack safe. Did you know I have a daughter now?”

They spend the rest of the evening catching up. Aiden brings them food and drink, informs them Jed and Sean, as well as a huge part of the rest of the soldiers, are moving on in two days to act on Arvid’s intel, but they’re to remain and Siderun for the Shurleys. Lastly, he tells them to go the heck to sleep. Marlon undresses to his underwear and carefully crawl into bed with Arvid despite all the bruises and bandages. Arvid is out like a light within minutes of Marlon draping his arm around him purring his all-is-well into Arvid’s shoulder. Marlon doesn’t think he could sleep after all this but is dragged into exhausted unconsciousness soon thereafter. 

That night he has a nightmare. He sees the missing hours of his memory as if he’s floating over the scene. Him comforting Arvid with Charles sitting pressed against his back comforting him. Jed’s talking to Arvid, encouraging and praising him while pulling out spike after spike. It takes longer and longer for Arvid to reach out his hand to Jed after each spike but he always does. Marlon’s aware he’s dreaming, unsure if it’s a memory or an after-construct. There’s no sound to the scene. Instead, he hears bits of a conversation he’s not part of drifting at the fringe of his dream-awareness. Arvid’s whispered voice retelling what he himself had said about Coombs, a stranger answering, asking questions. They’re saying other things. Things he can’t make out. 

He wakes up with sunlight filtering through the canvas walls and a cry of alarm raised in the camp. Arvid’s sleeping soundly beside him. Or, he thinks so, until he sits up and Arvid drowsily mumbles “Three dead. None of them your Chuck. No need to rush because he’s long gone and you won’t find him.”

“Who?”

“The Commander, of course.”

Three soldiers have been killed with not a scratch on them, all _inside_ the camp. It’s the stuff of ghost stories and nightmares, but true to Arvid’s words there are no further repercussions.

The time that follows is a fond time for Marlon. They do raids against the Union, putting pressure on their army, scout the area around camp for enemies and greet their own soldiers coming to restock or rest. They’re winning, but it’s slow going, driving the Union back inch by inch. Charles takes to reading to Arvid from his manuscripts. Arvid loves it which might be why Charles takes to him, adoring him as much as he adores Charles’ stories. Marlon keeps courting Charles. He’s unusually awkward about it and can’t help it. He’s head over heels. Charles’ _Alpha_ sister is a problem. For Marlon and Amara, it’s loathing at first meeting. She’s jealous and possessive of Charles and if it hadn’t been for Charles being more like Marlon when it came to sex, the siblings might very well have ended up mated. As for Charles? He enjoys driving Marlon mad with want more than he wants to have sex. It takes two weeks before they first make love. It’s a surprise to find out it’s Charles’ first time. He has a ton of hangups and his sex-drive is way lower than Marlon’s. Nothing of that matters to Marlon as long as he’s near and it only takes a few sessions of lovemaking for the mating bond to form. The next time Jed comes back to camp he cements Charles’ pack bond - something Charles only allows with Marlon participating. To Marlon’s disgruntlement, Amara too gets cemented into the pack. But fair is fair. Charles’ had stated that she was a package deal from the very beginning and Aiden’s being a good wingman, often distracting her and taking her to his bed. Charles doesn’t have a lot of trouble resisting his close Alpha kin despite sticking around past the aversion period. That’s unusual. 

Marlon gets a dose of what happens when Os linger past the aversion period when Clara comes to the camp. When she presented she’d gotten a scent that made him think ‘I love you, but I love you more if you keep yourself 10 feet away from me.’ Now it’s the opposite. He wants nothing more than to tie her up on his knot and the feeling is mutual. Some superior from another pack chooses them to do a scouting mission together, simply by picking names from a list. Jed takes one look at them when they come back and sends Clara away to fight somewhere where no other Williams Alpha is stationed.

Arvid and Marlon have a fight. If you can call it that. Arvid’s still wrapped in gauze, feet in plaster and eyes covered when he hears Marlon mention the Light. “What did you just say?” Arvid asks, scent turning into a mix of aggression, anger, and fear.

Marlon who’d been talking to Aiden turns to look at Arvid just to find him ramrod stiff with lips pressed to an angry little line. “What?”

“Did you just thank the damn _Light_?”

“Yes?” Marlon answers uncertainly.

“That’s it. I’m out of here. I’m not sticking around for a damn Conservative.” Arvid sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, grimacing when his feet hit the ground. He somehow manages to stand up on his broken feet, trusting the plaster to keep him upright despite the burst of pain in his scent.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Marlon says taking a hurried step towards him putting a hand in the middle of Arvid’s chest trying to push him down again. “I’m not a Conservative. The Light was originally a pack god. She was called the Wayfinder and guided the travelling home. She―” He cuts off when Arvid grabs his wrist and tugs him close, dropping his impressive fangs to growl an icy threat in his face. In panic, Marlon pushes his face closer so Arvid can _feel_ that he’s licking his lips in submission against his lips and lower fangs. To the left of them, Aiden growls in deadly-intent, warning Arvid that if he makes a reality of his threat Aiden will kill him. Arvid quiets down.

“You listen to me, son of Ares. I was once a soft boy who considered riding my bike really fast an adventure. I was once a wanderer who survived any way I could, getting by on my smile and willingness to work, who would never consider doing drugs. I was once a wild O who offered myself to anyone who’d do me a favour. I was once an accomplished thief who’d cut any corner to get where I wanted. I was once a content farmer who took joy out of planting seeds and watch them grow, who found peace in harvesting olives in the sun. I’m none of those things today. Man or god, where we started out is not relevant. It’s who we are in any given moment. A god is the sum of his or her worshippers' actions. That means that today the Light is a cruel and capricious god set on destroying the Packrunners he once guided. If I hear you mention the Light in a positive manner again, this friendship is over. You got that? You’ll be dead to me. Another love to mourn. _Do you understand?_ ”

“Yes,” Marlon squeaks.

“I prayed to Ares, and then you came. He sent you to me. You may pray to any other god, but he’s singled you out. You belong to him. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

Aiden stops growling when Arvid relaxes and leans his forehead against Marlon’s. “I’ve set my mind to run with you when we’re dead. I’m no longer a man who fits with my lost pack. You and I, we work. I don’t want to lose you to the oblivion of the Light, Peepers.”

“I don’t want that either.”

Arvid wraps his arms around Marlon. “Burn the Light inside of you, Marlon. I’m serious.”

“Yes. Please lay down. You’re hurting yourself.”

Arvid licks at Marlon’s neck gland and siphons. Marlon’s glad he does. Arvid’s still noseblind until his nose heals, but this way he can smell all the fear, anxiety and grief Marlon feels about nearly losing him. Arvid lets go of him and gets back into the bed. Marlon sits down on the bed, cups Arvid’s cheek and caresses back and forth with his thumb, self-soothing. They’re all quiet for a long moment, then Aiden speaks. “I hope you’re wrong about Ares answering your prayer, Arvid. Ares is known to take a hefty price for any interference.”

“If he does, he’ll take the price from me, won’t he?” Arvid answers and turns his head to place a kiss in the palm of Marlon’s hand. A simple gesture evaporating all of Marlon’s fears in one go.

Marlon’s struggled to let go of the faith he’d acquired from Finn. But faced with Arvid’s ultimatum, he bites his tongue and starts praying to Ares instead. He prays silently, inwardly, not because he needs a god to pray to, but because praying to the Wayfinder had become something habitual and breaking a habit is easier if you replace it with another habit. Like so much of what Arvid’s told him in the past, the sentence ‘It’s who we are in any given moment,’ sticks inside of him. He vows to try to be more self-aware. To always be someone Arvid―and by extension, he himself―can be proud of. 

Arvid heals quickly and adds himself into the roster of soldiers as soon as he’s fit enough to do so. They get to keep him for several weeks after he’s healed. They’re out on a mission together―a full squad―when they come upon a strange marking on a tree. It’s a male Alpha’s markings and as weird as he smells Marlon finds him incredibly attractive. Aiden, not so much. “What the heck is that thing? He’s not even human.”

Arvid’s lingered in the back while they sniffed the marking curiously. Now he turns to look at them with an ambivalent expression. “That’s my cue to leave you, I’m afraid.”

Marlon spins around to gape at him with heartbroken eyes. He can’t bring himself to ask him to stay but his expression says it all.

Arvid strides up to him and cups his cheeks. “I’ll make you a promise. If we’re set to leave the continent, I’ll come back to you instead. And if you go to war against the Conservatives, I’ll come to fight by your side no matter what. I promise you that.” His eyes are serious and sincere and he speaks with urgency as if it’s very important to him that Marlon believes him.

But Marlon doesn’t. 

When he watches Arvid leave, casting one last look over his shoulder before he melts into the underbrush, Marlon’s convinced it’s the last time he’ll ever see him. It’s the first time Arvid’s promised to come back to him and it’s the first time Marlon doesn’t believe he will.

* * *


	27. Not Like This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Marlon and Aiden is out scouting together, Aiden brings up an issue he's having with Marlon's mate.   
> A messenger from home comes to camp bringing bad news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I was moping about people no longer commenting, then it turns out you have, but my email notifications are no longer working. -.-' _Dude._
> 
> **Chapter Warnings:**  
>  unsanitary licking of dead bodies (seriously, I don't know how to warn for it otherwise)  
> Joke about cannibalism  
> Character deaths. We knew they were coming but heads up, we'll lose some pack members we've gotten to know.

* * *

Charles’ scent will forever be the most narcotizing, amazingly wonderful scent Marlon’s ever smelt. He’s sure of it. Now he gets what Jed was talking about when he said Karen could give him rest. He still sleeps for fewer hours than most but falling asleep is no problem the nights he has Charles tucked against his chest. Those nights he has fewer nightmares and sleeps an hour or two longer. When the two of them are separated it feels like something is missing inside of him. Like now. He and Aiden are out scouting and there's a Charles-shaped hole in Marlon.

“Heck. This is darned scary,” Aiden complains. He’s crouched down to push his nose into the snow in search of tracks covered by two days of snowfall.

“What is?” Marlon stands looking at the trees for movement. When Laurent was still in the military he and Marlon had often been paired up to patrol the trees since they were both adept climbers. Some mercenaries would also take to the trees but no company specialised in it.

“They’re _gone_. We haven’t smelt a trace of them for a week and we’ve been going in increasingly wide circles.”

“So? The Union probably stopped paying them all. I don’t see how it can be scary that the forest is no longer holding any mercenaries.” Okay, Marlon _could_ see why it might be scary. But Arvid had spoken about the possibility that their company might jump continent so why not all the other mercenary companies too?

“But what if it means that they’re planning something big?” Aiden’s unnerved by it. To him, the woods have been full of activity, sometimes weeks old sometimes fresher. But usually he’d pick up _something_. Even if it was just a scout or squad having passed through. Now, there’s been no one who didn’t belong in the woods. The only traces they’d found bore familiar scents from packs and soldiers they’d met in camp - their own people. For two days the closest thing to action they’ve come was happening upon two squirrels that were fighting.

“If they’re still in Union employ they probably moved along when the Union was driven back further.”

Aiden stands up. “I hope you’re right. Because all I can smell is,” he makes a frustrated gesture, “snow and forest. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies like a bad omen.”

“ _Or_ ,” Marlon persists, “we’re winning.”

“Fine,” Aiden says with a tone that says that it isn’t. They start walking again, senses on full alert. Maybe that’s what’s spooking Aiden. Keeping on full alert for so long for no reason is mentally taxing and gives you time to paint up ghosts in your mind.

After a while of walking in silence, Aiden speaks again. “Now that you’re mated… do you still miss Finn?”

“Wow. That’s out of the blue.” Marlon walks several seconds before he answers. “Can I lie?”

Aiden stops and lifts his head to sniff the breeze, looking away from Marlon. He chuckles softly and shakes his head then keeps walking. “No.”

“In that case, yes. I’m trying to hate him. Trying not to long for him and to want to have long, deep discussions with him. I _know_ he’s the enemy. I _know_ that, and yet…”

“Mh. But he’s the enemy to the _idea_ of us, not your personal enemy. I know how stubbornly you cling to the love you feel for people. I don’t blame you. But…” Aiden shrugs and crouches down to sniff at the snow. Somewhere underneath in the earth, there’s a nest of mice―even Marlon can smell them this close. It's tempting to do a little hunting to pass time, dig the small rodents up to get some fresh meat to their field rations mostly to make it more entertaining to eat. But Aiden stands up again and continues walking. "I guess he has to do something truly awful for you to stop missing him, huh?"

"Can we just pretend I don't miss him and I'll do my best to _act_ as if I don't?"

Aiden throws an amused look over his shoulder. "Alright. Care to tell me why you scampered off to hide when Keith's squad came to camp? You and Keith had a fight or something?"

"No. I wanted to go say hello but did you see the officer who led them?"

"That incredibly beautiful man that makes you realize why Progs value looks?"

Marlon makes a face. "That's the one."

"Yes, I saw him. Naked. From every angle." Aiden throws another look at Marlon over his shoulder, this time he's flaring and has a smug smirk dancing on his lips.

Marlon makes a retching noise. "You didn't."

"I sure as heck did. He likes red eyes and I have literally never seen any man that pretty. He was pretty _and_ masculine. With a great scent and personality as well. We―"

" _Stop it_. Please. Stop. I don't want to hear."

Aiden chuckles. He stops to sniff the air in a circle before shifting his rifle and relaxing, turning to face Marlon with amusement sparkling in his eyes. "Okay. You've caught my attention. So why were you hiding from him? Did you try to hook up and made a fool of yourself?"

Marlon scoffs. "No, I certainly did _not_ ," he answers primly. "Unlike _some_ , I don't want to poke my penis into anyone I find attractive." He gives Aiden a pointed look but Aiden just grins like his hedonism is a point of pride. Marlon rolls his eyes. "That was Carter Wadsworth."

"I know his name, Mar, I just don't know why it should ring a bell.”

“It’s Carter, alright? Carter I met at Coombs’ house. His lover,” Marlon grouses annoyedly.

Aiden whistles. “And he chose you over Carter? Wow, Mar, I know you said he couldn’t walk properly but you didn’t tell me he was eye-blind as well,” he teases.

“ _Hey._ ”

“No, but seriously. You described him as a complete jerk and he really isn’t. I don’t know if you were just showing your jealous bias or if it’s one of those cases we’ve seen with a few other rich, bratty Conservatives who turn into decent, dedicated people when they finally get something constructive to do aside from being rich.” It’s true that the army had that effect on some. Rich Conservatives in particular since they grew up having servants do everything for them. Packrunners, even rich ones like the Williamses, still had to do chores since they wouldn’t let strangers in their homes willy-nilly. Of course, for some, the military had the opposite effect and all they’d do was feel sorry for themselves and whine. “And you should be grateful. Keith told me he’d suffered pretty badly from bullying until Carter took over commanding his squad, putting an end to it.”

Marlon makes a suffering noise. “Can we skip this conversation?”

Aiden sniggers, delighting in making Marlon uncomfortable. Siblings are the worst. The _worst._ Aiden starts saying something but the breeze suddenly changes direction, carrying a scent. Both of them drop to the ground to let their white-mottled uniforms melt in with the snow, pelting to look even less ‘human’, then lie scenting the air.

Technically, the scent they’d caught isn’t a threat on its own but it could mean trouble if the cause for it has access to scent blockers. What they picked up was the scent of dead people. A few hand gestures and looks pass between them then Marlon darts to climb the nearest tree while Aiden goes the other direction on foot to circle around the place the frozen scent is coming from. Moving through snow covered trees is not ideal stealth wise, but still gives a better view. It doesn’t take them too long to clear the area for enemies and locate the snowed-over bodies of 13 people. They brush the snow off them looking for anything valuable finding nothing. The dead Union soldiers have been looted already, pointedly left unburned in a show of disrespect. Some have normal injuries, but some… “I think this was done by the same guy who got you in the ribs,” Aiden says and spreads his hands over wicked-looking claw marks on a man.

“That’s Arvid’s guys. Why would they be killing Unionists?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they stopped paying them? Broke the contract?” Aiden gives him a shrug. “How long have they been dead?” he asks.

Marlon withholds an amused smirk. “I don’t know. Why don’t you check?” he asks, one corner of his lip creeping upward in anticipation.

Aiden widens his eyes in annoyance. “They’re frozen solid. You know I can’t. This is _your_ area of expertise.”

Marlon tuts. “You’re such a squeamish kitty-boy, Aid.”

Aiden glares resentfully at him. 

Honestly, Marlon finds Aiden’s squeamishness hilarious. “Alright, alright. I’ll do it.” He rubs the frozen neck of the body he’s examining until it starts to warm up and the outermost layer of skin starts thawing, then he puts his fingers in his mouth, licks at them and siphons. Aiden makes a gagging noise. Then another. He covers his grossed out face with a hand so only his eyes are visible between his fingers. He looks pale and greenish and his eyes shine of pure suffering. It’s a struggle not to laugh at him.

Aiden is pretty good at establishing how long someone’s been dead as long as it isn’t below freezing outside. Part of it is because of decay but mostly because he can smell so many hints around the bodies that other missed - old footprints and other disturbances. Decay is tricky because it relies on many factors―weather, humidity, environment, insects―that makes is easier to put an accurate estimate if you’re familiar with all these things. If you come upon a carcass somewhere anybody could tell if it has passed its due date for eating, but putting an accurate time of death is a different matter. People with far inferior senses of smell could pin it more precisely than Aiden due to experience and training. Police officers who investigate murder for an instance. Packrunners that monitored the wildlife in their territory meticulously is another example. If you’re tracking, light rainfall is the best since moisture carries scent. (A rain _storm_ is another matter.) But the colder it gets the harder it gets. A layer of snow on top of a trail obscures it. Cold weather freezes the moist―that carries scent―solid. As for dead bodies, they don’t decompose if they’re frozen.

Marlon had proved to be a lot better than Aiden at remembering the weather and calculating the time it’d take for a body to freeze and thaw. So by siphoning he got a good measure of how much the frozen body had decomposed and could think back to the weather conditions. They’d had a very irregular winter with several peaks of warm and sunny weather dotted with extreme bouts of cold. “I reckon they died about 12, maybe 13 days ago,” he tells Aiden.   
“Around the time we started seeing fewer and fewer mercenaries around before they disappeared. Alright. Let’s get going.” 

As they get up and start walking away Marlon says, “We should carve a few pieces off to grill with our rations. They were still good to eat.”

Aiden puts a hand over his mouth making a gagging noise. Then he quickly removes the hand, folds over and pukes. 

Marlon cackles. Aiden’s so squeamish even joking about cannibalism pushes him over in these circumstances. It’s brilliant. Siblings are the best.

* * *

When they set up camp they’ve foraged a little bit as they went, finding velvet shank mushrooms and some frozen berries to spice up their rations with. They’ve built a simple shelter and eaten but don’t feel like going to sleep just yet. Instead, they sit side by side facing different directions on a fallen tree nearby, looking up in the hole in the canopy at the bluish-black velvet sky and the millions of stars, view only obscured by the mist of their breaths. Back at home, the smog makes it impossible to see all the stars like this, but here the air is crisp and clear.

“Hey, Mar…?” Aiden says after a moment of peaceful silence.

"Mhm?"

"Have you told Chuck you're still writing?"

"He doesn't have to know. His writing is a sensitive subject for him and it’s been his dream to become a writer since he learned to read.”

“Sensitive,” Aiden states the word as neutrally as possible. It isn’t even a question but Marlon feels prompted to answer. 

“He’s shit at taking critique and when Sean gave him my latest history book… he read it and afterwards, he was subdued and unhappy. When I read through his stuff and point out misspellings and grammatical errors it’s fine. But any pointers to pacing, plot, character building… he’ll get snippy. He’ll smile and say it’s fine but he won’t let me touch him for hours afterwards.”

Aiden huffs in humourless amusement. “I bet when you say that when he won’t let you touch him, you’re not even talking about sex.”

Marlon shakes his head and sighs. “No. It’s all ‘I’m not really feeling it. I need some time to myself.’” 

Aiden looks to the side and soon thereafter a hare comes bouncing into view. It stops, standing on its hind legs to look at them. They both watch it quietly for a couple of minutes until it decides to move on.

“So… what are you going to do? Stop writing?” Aiden asks.

“Never. I have it all figured out. I’ll publish under pseudonyms, using different ones depending on the type of book. I’m not going to allow any alias to publish more than 3 to 5 books and I won’t tell Charles. I need to keep writing because Finn found my writing a threat to his cause. But after I publish them, I can bring them home to Charles claiming I bought them. That way, I’ll get his honest opinion on them without him getting disappointed or angry at me.”

Aiden bows his neck and shakes his head. “Jinkies, Mar, are you listening to yourself?”

Marlon scowls. “What, you think I should _stop_ writing?”

“Of course not,” Aiden answers and gives him an annoyed look before leaning in to give his shoulder a brief rub with his neck. “It’s just that―” He cuts off with a frustrated noise, takes a deep breath and says, “You know what I think you should do? Get another mate.”

“What? _Why?_ What’s wrong with Charles? I thought you liked him. I love him. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Marlon sputters and rambles, jarred by the outlandish suggestion.

"I don't mean for you to stop being mated to him, you peabrain. I mean for you to get one more mate. I like Chuck. I do. He's a likeable person. But the next time Arvid shows up you should mate him. Chuck likes him and he already thinks of Arvid as a package deal, just like Amara is a package deal. And even just counting you, me, and Amara that's three Alphas. We could have another O amongst us. I'm never getting mated and Amara's too obsessed with her brother to be interested in anyone else.”

Marlon scrutinizes Aiden with a frown. There aren’t any hints of why he’s saying this in his scent and his face gives no indication except that he’s serious. Marlon bends his neck to look at the snow around his boots. “Why? You afraid Charles going to get killed and I’ll lose my scent like grandpa did?”

“Crap. I wasn’t but I am _now_.”

Marlon sniggers silently and takes his gloves off to scoop some snow up, trying to squeeze it into a ball. It’s too cold so the snow won’t hold together. He keeps squeezing it anyway. “So why do you want me to mate someone else?”

Aiden takes a deep breath and balloons his cheeks holding his breath before letting it out in a big puff. “Okay. Don’t get all defensive, okay? Just hear me out before you stick your nose in the air and storm off huffing indignantly. Okay?”

Marlon chuckles. “I’m not storming off anywhere.”

Aiden scoots further away on the tree, swings one leg over the trunk to straddle it, then scoots closer again facing Marlon. “You’re not going to like what I say. I know that. I just want you to listen and think it over. That’s it.”

Marlon’s smile falters. “Okay?”

Aiden stares at him, gaze intense like he’s trying to read Marlon’s mind. Then he nods to himself. “You say Chuck’s the best thing to ever happen to you? He’s not.” Marlon’s instantly ticked off but Aiden holds up his hands to forestall him. “Just listen, Mar. I’ll tell you why. And don’t get me wrong, I _don’t_ want you to leave him. And I _do_ like him. It’s not that.”

Marlon’s lips press into a thin line. “Okay.”

Aiden takes a deep breath. “Every person you’ve gotten stuck on has made you better, one way or another. Heck, even Coombs, in a way. He encouraged you to learn and to see from new angles. Everyone you’ve gotten stuck on has respected you from the get-go. But… Chuck doesn’t.”

“Charles loves me,” Marlon defends with worms in his belly.

“Yes, he does. He’s as crazy about you as you’re gone for him. I’m not denying that. But he doesn’t respect you. He’s weaponizing touch and attention. And you, because you’re so crazy about him, give in and bend to his will. Just think about it. You talk to Arvid. You’re completely honest with him and listen to what he says. He’s _never_ demanded you be anything but who you are. The only time he put demands on your friendship he didn’t do it because he expected you to change, he just drew a line in the sand about what he could put up with without infringing on his own ideals. That’s what he did. He was about to walk out on us because he couldn’t get behind a deep friendship with a Light worshipper. He didn’t make a demand of you until you stopped him from leaving. Compare that to Chuck. You’ve just started out and you’re already planning to lie to Chuck for the rest of your life. That’s a long time, Mar. All because Chuck doesn’t like that you are a more experienced writer than him. That’s not healthy.”

“He makes me happy,” Marlon states sourly and breathes into the snowball he’s squeezing to make it melt and turn to ice.

“He does,” Aiden agrees. “At times he makes you more harmonious and relaxed than I’ve ever smelt you. And that’s great. It’s the way he uses withholding closeness to get his will that bothers me. I don’t think you _shouldn’t_ be mated to him. What I want is for you two to develop a sound and honest communication. Because if you don’t, it’s going to get worse. You’re going to suffer from rejection even though he won’t leave you. _But_. If you take another mate it will be less of a problem. When Chuck tries to give you the cold shoulder you’ll have someone else to curl up to and that’ll force Chuck to rethink his strategy. He’ll have to actually talk to you or he’ll be the one feeling rejected. Arvid would be perfect. You love each other. He’s easygoing and non-competitive and gets along with Chuck. All three of you will end up happier for it in the long run.”

Marlon’s fingers have started to go numb from the cold. He throws the now perfectly spherical ice-ball away and puts on his gloves. Aiden’s words give him a bad feeling inside. He doesn’t want to hear it. When Charles tells him he wants to be alone, it's his fault for hurting Charles’ feelings. What’s wrong with being considerate? It’ll get better when they’ve gotten to know each other more. Is it really that bad not to tell Charles he’s writing? Ever since he was drafted Marlon’s kept a notebook with him where he’s written short stories for kits, intending to find an illustrator for them once he got home. Coombs had put such a weight on the importance of getting to the minds of the young. So Marlon’s been writing kit-stories for Anna and had just started on a book for Juvies. It took a long time since his duties prevented him from hyper-focusing as he’d normally do when he wrote. Just a couple of paragraphs penned down now and then. Ironically, the times when Charles gave him the cold shoulder was the time he wrote, always with that little ball of anxiety in his belly and the fear of having alienated Charles completely. The relief of getting to touch and to be near again make up for it. It _does_.

Marlon tilts his head up again to look at the sky. “Arvid’s not coming back.”

Aiden huffs. “What are you talking about? I was right there beside you when he promised.”

“He’s not coming,” Marlon persists, watching a shooting star briefly streak by, gone in the blink of an eye.

Aiden’s silent. Marlon can feel his gaze bore into him but he doesn’t turn his head to meet it. Suddenly Aiden’s scent turns annoyed. “Boy, mom and dad really did a number on you, didn’t they,” he states. “You’re old enough to understand why they left. Stop moping. Nobody can promise not to die, but unless Arvid dies, he’ll come back. He _promised_. So have some darn faith in him, okay?”

“Go hump a cactus,” Marlon snipes, annoyed by Aiden’s annoyance.

Aiden grabs him by his thigh and waist and pulls himself as close as he can get, then starts to hump. He laughs when Marlon sputters and tries to shove him off. They end up tipping to the side then playfully wrestle in the snow. Both of them pelt to protect themselves from snow getting inside their clothes. It’s a short wrestle that has Aiden pinning him down grinning at him. “Mar, just think about what I said, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

“ _Fine._ I’ll think about it. Can we go to sleep now?”

They go to sleep in their simple shelter, curled around each other their thick fur keeping the cold at bay. Tomorrow they’ll turn back to camp to report that the only enemies that are present in the forest are frostbite and boredom.

* * *

Jed and Marlon argue more and more often when Jed comes to camp. Little news reaches them from home but Marlon keeps warning every Packrunner coming into camp about the conspiracy to get rid of Packrunning. The reactions are divided. It's soon clear that the ones to convince are the leaders of packs since people listen to them. Jed's the problem. He thinks the danger is vastly exaggerated and the people who Marlon talk to go to Jed for confirmation. One day they’re having one of their frustrated arguments. Like Aiden and Marlon had discovered (as well as anyone else scouting) more than a week ago all mercenary activity had suddenly vanished. Reports said it was the same everywhere. The Union had possibly stopped paying for Primal reinforcements but there are no sources to confirm it. The Union is a force to be reckoned with on their own, but in any area where fighting is a cat and mouse game, people with primal senses intact have an advantage. The sudden disappearance of mercenaries is alarming as it possibly preludes an attack by them elsewhere. Still, it doesn’t stop Jed and Marlon from getting into a shouting match.

“It’s ludicrous, Mar! One man can’t make packs fight in the way you’re suggesting!”

“It’s not _one man_! He plants ideas and tactics in the minds of many and sits back to watch his plans play out. It’s a matter of time before they come for us!”

Jed spreads his arms and looks towards the tent roof as if he’s asking for patience before looking back towards Marlon. “And how are they going to do that? Tell me! I―”

A harried-looking soldier sticks his head into the tent flap without even knocking. “Sirs! You need to come quick. There’s a messenger for you.”

Jed gives Marlon a look saying ‘ _We’re not done talking about this,_ ’ before turning to stride out of the tent. Marlon follows hot on his heels, angry for the perpetual resistance. When they close in on the open area in the middle of the camp, Marlon smells Laurent before he sees him. There are several people standing around him, some crouching down trying to talk to him where he lays panting in exhaustion in the snowy sludge. He reeks of distress, exhaustion and grief, propelling Marlon’s heart to his throat. He runs the last stretch to his friend to drop down and lay a hand on his shoulder, making a worried ‘ _Mrrt?_ ’ inquiring what’s happened. Laurent looks like he’s run all the way from New York. Impossible, of course, but he’s pushed himself to the limit, helped by the recent lack of enemies in the area. It takes him almost a full minute to regain his breath enough to turn his head and look at Marlon. He flares with low luminosity, canines sharpening to points for sincerity. “It… wasn’t… us,” he says, one word per laboured breath. His face crumples, eyes getting glossy from tears. “I’m so… sorry. It wasn’t… us. I swear it. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry,” he chokes out. It’s all he gets out before he starts sobbing his heart out.

Marlon’s cold inside, pulling Laurent into his lap, holding him, rocking him, trying to purr an all-is-well against his neck but anytime he does Laurent shakes his head with a “ _No, no, no_.” Big, wet flakes of snow start falling again, seeping into their clothes, chilling them worse than the muddy sludge they’re sitting in is already doing. Marlon looks up with wide, worried eyes to meet Jed’s gaze only to find him looking as bewildered and worried. His scent is nearly constantly neutral these days but he almost looks afraid. If something could scare Marlon more than anything, it’s Jed being afraid.

* * *

Amara holds out a bowl of soup to Laurent while Aiden drapes a thick blanket around his naked body. Both Marlon and Laurent had been stripped and dried not to catch a cold or get pneumonia. Marlon’s put on dry clothes pelted as thick of a fur as he can underneath. They’ve been hustled into Charles’ tent. When Laurent’s tried to tell them what’s wrong he’d just started crying again. But he’s exhausted and chilled to the bone so the first order of business is to fix that. Laurent takes the bowl of soup and holds it in his hands to warm himself without any interest in eating. His shivering is starting to subside. He’s sitting on the bed and Marlon on a chair opposite him. Charles stands by Marlon's side, holding his hand rubbing a thumb back and forth to soothe him. Jed comes back inside with Elise on his heel. The crowded tent stinks of fear and anxiety. Jed comes to stand behind Marlon, putting a grounding hand on his shoulder.

Laurent looks up to meet Jed’s gaze. “They’re dead. I’m so sorry.” His eyes flick to Marlon and then to the soup in his lap. “We were too late to save them. It wasn’t us, I swear. I’m so sorry.”

“Who is dead, Laurent?” Jed asks with a soft, composed voice.

Laurent swallows and looks up at Jed with heartbroken eyes. “All of you. There were only two survivors. That weird old man who talks to himself wasn’t there when it happened. There was someone else but she wasn’t one of yours. She’d been badly wounded and left for dead. But the rest of you are gone. I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean, the rest of us?” Marlon demands, getting agitated, a feeling of dread spreading under his skin.

Laurent looks at him and smells like he’s about to cry again. “Your daughter. Your Main. All the kits and Os left behind. The pregnant O who came home from the front. The staff assigned to you except for that one woman. I― I― I wasn’t fast enough when I heard the call. I’m so sorry.”

“Anna? Anna’s dead?” Marlon’s brain refuses to believe what he’s hearing.

Laurent gives him a sad little nod.

“No. No, you’re lying! She can’t be dead! Tell me you’re lying!” Jed presses him down into the chair again when he’s trying to get up.

Laurent shakes his head and looks at his bowl of soup again. “I’m not. I’m sorry, Mar. But you need to believe me, it wasn’t us.”

“What happened, Laurent?” Jed prompts.

Marlon sits there stunned. He can’t process. Can’t accept it. He’s got a growing ball of ice in his belly that seeps into every cell chilling him worse than the wet sludge outside ever could. He can smell himself as being angry but that’s not at all what he’s feeling. Aiden’s eyes are wide and he’s paled. Amara’s standing beside him, holding him and purring in comfort just like Charles does to Marlon. The only thing that gives away that Jed might be having a strong reaction is how he’s squeezing Marlon’s shoulder.

“They were passing through our territory. I don’t even know why. Usually, they kept certain times and we would escort them. But not this time. I don’t know why all of them were out. The kits are, _were_ rarely allowed to leave your property. And we’d escort Sandra and the others home from your office. Only about ten of us but that’s enough to discourage raiders. But now they were all going through our territory midday without contacting us first. I don’t know why. We didn’t know until it was too late. I’m sorry.” Laurent rambles like he doesn’t know where to start.

“We went through your territory and you weren’t aware of it. Don’t you have guards?” Jed asks patiently. Marlon hasn’t got a clue how he could keep so level having learned that his mate is dead. 

Jane is dead.

No.

Anna is dead.

No. No.

It’s hard to follow along.

“Usually, yes. But the seizing was an all hands on deck type of situation.”

“The what?” Marlon asks.

“The seizing. How much do you know about what’s going on back at home?”

They shake their heads. “We don’t get much news at all over here.”

“Okay. Um. So you kept your end of the deal. Sometimes we’d be nabbed by the law and arrested for desertion but you’d bail us out within hours. And the military police, if they arrested us at all, would close the case and let us go equally fast. We’d escort you in the city and during times when it was unrest in the city, we’d let a few people guard your perimeter on Long Island. The law couldn’t get at us. At first.” Laurent takes a deep breath to steel himself. “But then they came in force. This time they didn’t try to arrest anyone of us. They showed us a paper and told us that a new law stated that criminals aren't allowed to care for kits anymore so they were there to do a seizing. We argued at first. Not all of us had deserted. Our Os with kits younger than five were at home legally. They said it didn’t matter. We had deserters amongst us. So they were gonna take our kits into custody to prevent us influencing the kits negatively. They were to place the kits with suitable parents so they’d grow up and become well-adapted, law-abiding citizens. We couldn’t stand for that.” He cradles the bowl of soup closer to his chest. “The fight was brutal. They had guns but we outnumbered them. And in the middle of the fight, I heard it. Your distress call. Mal and I, and a few others left to go to you. We’d promised to protect you. We went as fast as we could. After all, we’re more than 800 adults so 30 of us going to your aid wouldn’t make much difference in the fight for our kits. But when we got there, it was too late.”

Jed’s fingers dig into Marlon’s shoulder so hard it hurts. Marlon welcomes the pain. He focuses on it, holds onto it like an anchor not to be swept away in the maelstrom of emotion. He welcomes the anger that boils in his blood temporarily overriding the cold core caused by the news of Anna’s death. He simply can’t accept that as true. “But criminals… None of you have been to trial for desertion, right? You haven’t been judged,” Marlon says.

“No. But we have some convicted felons amongst our ranks. They said that a new law states that a pack is judged as a cohesive unit now, so if there’s one criminal in a pack the pack can’t be trusted to raise kits.”

“That’s ludicrous!” Elise exclaims.

Laurent nods. “And they also say that no trial is needed anymore for desertion.” He looks at Jed. “When we came to the site of your pack’s slaughter… Our pack’s scent was all over the place. It makes no sense. I could smell Old man Cogwheel and he was literally right beside me before I went to your aid. But there was no other smell, no traces of anyone that wasn’t a Hale. And all the papers write that we’ve killed you. I swear we didn’t do it, Sir. I swear!”

Jed’s chest heaves and his nostrils flare. He takes a few sharp breaths before his breathing returns to normal. “Of course you didn’t, Laurent. You’d given a promise. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the attackers used scent blockers and then prepped the site with your scent. Was old man Cogwheel one of the people who’d been arrested recently?”

“I― I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t keep track of everyone in the pack,” Laurent answers regretfully.

“I’m certain that if we’d ask him, the answer would be yes,” Jed states. “For now, I want you to eat and get some rest. Amara will stay here and keep you company. The rest of you, come with me. And go get every Williams currently in camp.”

* * *

“First off, I want to start by saying - I was wrong,” Jed says with a grave demeanour, standing behind the lectern addressing everyone in the big tent meant for briefings. Every Williams in camp is there, as well as several Shurleys and a few other Packrunners that are high-ranking in their own packs. When they’d shown curiosity as to why there was a sudden pack meeting Jed had told them to join.

Marlon’s sitting stock still on the folding chair front row, numb and refusing to compute. Now he stirs to life. “No. Not like this. Not like this.”

Instead of reprimanding him for interrupting Jed gives him a soft look and purrs soothingly. Not an all-is-well, but rather an I-suffer-with-you. Aiden who’s sitting next to Marlon tugs him close and presses cold lips to his forehead, holding him. His cheeks are wet and he reeks of mourning. Charles keeps holding Marlon’s hand, squeezing it now and then in a constant reminder that he’s there and he’s not going anywhere.

Jed looks at the gathering again. “There’s no easy way to say this. No way of softening the blow. Every Williams currently in this tent, I’m devastated to have to inform you that we’ve lost our mates and kits. Everyone left back home has been murdered except Phillip who wasn’t with them when it happened. The rest are all dead. If the question ‘but what about so-and-so?’ pops up in your head, the answer is yes. They too.”

He waits to let the message sink in. The group stirs. Marlon hears and smells the reactions. The smell in the tent sours with fear, spikes with anger, and tangs with sorrow.

Jed gives it a few minutes, standing patiently waiting before he raises his hands to get people to quiet down again. “Our pack was on the move through the city when it happened. The responsible party are the Conservatives. Who gave the order is still unknown but it doesn’t matter. Marlon’s been right all along. The Conservatives are coming for us. They are aiming to destroy all Packrunning, to convert us all and get rid of the ones who refuse. They've done a good job of it so far. Up until now, I have not believed them to be behind the frequent pack wars. I thought them incapable of instigating them. But this time there is irrefutable proof. They made a mistake. The mistake of either being unaware of a promise given or not understanding how sacrosanct a promise given is to us."

He pauses again.

"The Hales had given us a promise to protect those of us left behind. They kept that promise. We promised to keep them out of jail and we've bailed them out within hours every time they've been arrested for desertion. But every time you get arrested samples of secretion are taken. So when our pack was slaughtered on Hale territory by people using scent blockers, they used these samples of secretion to direct blame where there is none."

"Where were the Hales when it happened?" someone in the back asks.

"They were fighting for their lives defending their kits from being stolen, and still they diverted a part of their pack to come to our aid when they heard our call. The Conservatives have implemented several new laws to get to us Packrunners specifically. One, that you no longer have to be judged by a court of law to be considered a criminal for desertion. And two, a criminal may no longer raise kits." He flares brightly, suddenly smelling of rage. "And three, the most heinous law of them all, a pack will be judged as a cohesive unit. That means by law it takes one member of the pack being judged for a misdemeanour once for them to lawfully be allowed to seize our kits."

Again he waits for the pure outrage to die down before he leans forward gripping the lectern. "And you know what? _They're right!_ "

People fall into a confused and indignant silence.

"For too long now we've lived a peaceful and tolerant existence. The first rule of Packrunning has shrunk to only our own pack. Most of us have forgotten it is bigger than that. But it is. _We are one!_ Every Packrunning kit is my kit! Every sorrow that befalls a Packrunner is my sorrow! Every pack mistreated and disrespected is my pack! We are one, and when they went after our kits they went too far! They think they can make up laws as they please and expect us to obey? No! It's time to make them obey our law! To show them what happens if you murder our kits! This means war!"

The room erupts in angry roars thirsting for revenge. Even Aiden’s fired up despite his mourning. But Marlon feels too empty, too numbstruck. Words have died inside of him and he just wants to crawl into a corner and hide.

* * *

Marlon doesn’t speak. He barely spoke a word on the rushed journey home. He doesn't speak when he comes home to find fifty Hales on their property, guarding and helping out under Phillip’s directions. He doesn’t speak when he sees the corpses of his family and his daughter, kept frozen in the coldest parts of their cellar in wait for the pack to return to burn them. Phillip had cleaned them and put them in their finest clothes. Beside one of the tables where the kits are laid out a shape swept in thick clothing and blankets sits on the floor. She's hugging her knees and reeks of mourning, dried saline, fever and grave infection. Phillip walks around her and pats her head with an awkward "There, there," that seems habitual as he does it again the next time he passes her.

"Here they are. This one won't let me treat her injuries. She cries herself to exhaustion and when she's rested she bawls some more. Frankly, I don't know what to do with her. She wouldn't leave the kits when they were attacked and won't leave them now. Left her for dead they did. For good reason. If the Hales hadn't brought her back with the rest she would have been. I stitched her up good as I could but I haven't been able to convince her to let me treat her further since she woke up. Poor thing," he explains to the rest of them and reaches out to give her another awkward pat on the head. "There, there." It might be the most coherent he's ever been. 

"You're allowing a Conservative remain on our property after what happened?" someone asks upset and indignant.

Phillip drops fangs with that eerie speed you'd never expected from him. Flaring, he grabs the protestor by the collar and pulls him nose to nose. "You listen to me, you snot-nosed kitling-brain. When someone dies in defence of your kits you honour and protect them even when they fail. You hear me?! Even if they're blinded by the Light or self-stunted. You honour their sacrifice and loyalty. Don't they teach you kits anything these days?!"

Normally, Phillip going off like that would be something that makes Marlon laugh. Phillip is the only one he knows who can call an 80-year-old a kit. But now all he can feel inside is a vast and endless icy nothing.

"Y-you don't think she was in on it?" the protestor stutters. Marlon can't remember his name despite having known him all his life. He has trouble remembering any names at all. There's Jed, Sean, Aiden, Charles, Phillip, Charles' sister… Mara? Ara? Mona? No. He can't remember her name and he can't be bothered to care.

"Of course not. The servants were slaughtered to a man except for her. They've heard the rumours that someone survived and they're not happy about it. They're looking for her. But they're not getting her. Oh no. Not on my watch, mark my words."

"Who are 'they'?" Jed asks.

Phillip gives him a dirty look. "You should know already. If not you can ask Marlon when he comes back."

"Marlon is right here, Phillip," Jed says and puts a hand on Marlon's shoulder. Marlon barely feels it. He hasn't been able to take his eyes from the little red-headed body on the table since he got here.

Phillip gives Jed an unimpressed look. "Is he?" He reached out to wave a hand in front of Marlon's eyes without breaking gaze with Jed. Marlon doesn't even blink, showing no reaction whatsoever. "Is he really?" 

Jed's answer is silence.

"Didn't think so," Phillip says. "Now, you'll have to excuse me. I have to go fix dinner for you and our guests since you all are going to bumble around like useless idiots until we've foisted these safely off to the other side. Useless." With that, he leaves them, his voice echoing through the stone corridor as he mutters to himself.

Marlon takes a hesitant step forward. Then another. He's not sure how he gets from there to holding his cold and stiff daughter, sitting curled around her beside the mourning Conservative servant on the floor. He's crying. Snot running and sobs hiccupping while he's pressing his lips to Anna's temple purring an all-is-well as if it'll be true and she'll wake up if only he can get her warm enough. The Conservative is crying again too. Fatigued and quiet tears run down her cheeks. The smell of pain and fresh blood reaches through Marlon's haze for him to notice it's coming from her hand. He sees her clutching her star pendant so hard her knuckles are white. The sharp points of the star must be what's causing the blood. Impulse makes Marlon put an arm around her and pull her to his chest so he's hugging both her and Anna. He moves his lips to purr the lie of all-is-well to the crown of the woman's head instead. Her arm comes to rest around Anna as she cries harder. She too not wanting to let go of the dead.

Naomi. Her name is Naomi. And when Aiden comes to gently take Anna from Marlon's hands to put her back on the table, Marlon refuses to let go of Naomi. He makes a sound that in words would be translated to 'honour your promise'. As exhausted, feverish and grief-stricken as she is, she understands him and remembers. He lifts her up and carries her out of the chamber as soon as she starts siphoning. That was the deal. She has to siphon every time he comes home as long as she remains on their property. He follows Aiden through the underground corridors and when he leaves the cellar he carries her to his room and puts her down on his bed. She sits with her legs over the edge close to passing out from exhaustion.

Gently he pries her hand open and dislodges the star pendant embedded there. Carefully he lifts the necklace over her head and lays it down on the nightstand where she can see it. He inspects the wounds, so insignificant to whatever injuries hidden by her clothes, but still fresh. He digs up his first aid kit from the leg pocket of his winter cargo pants and gets to work cleaning them. She sits still and lets him do it, watching him with an empty gaze.

When he's done there's a knock on the door. It opens and a familiar Alpha with wide eyes and harried what-the-heck? looks poke his head in. "Uh? Phillip just yelled at me for not being here ten minutes ago? Apparently, I’m needed?"

Marlon wishes he could remember how to smile. He sees what the Alpha’s carrying and gestures for him to come in and approach. He keeps purring his all-is-well and starts to remove the layers of blankets and clothes from Naomi. When he starts to unbutton her cardigan she suddenly clutches it closed anxiously and looks at him, her wide eyes asking a mute question. Marlon stops to meet her gaze. He has no words but makes the sound conveying that she's safe while he gives her a sad little nod. She holds on to the cardigan for several seconds before letting go.

Marlon can hear activity behind him then the Alpha crouches down in front of Naomi. "Hi, Naomi. I'm Billy. I'm a trained field medic and the best our pack can offer when it comes to medicine. I'm going to take a look at your injuries and see what I can do to help you. I have antibiotics and something for the pain…" Billy keeps talking to her calmly, explaining what he's going to do and that Marlon will be only a yip away if she needs him. She glances at Marlon who nods in confirmation.

She lets him undress her completely and lies down when Billy instructs her to. Nobody who sees her naked can doubt her innocence of any involvement in what happened. She's almost as badly off as Arvid had been. Only, she's dirty and her wounds have festered. Marlon gets up and fetches a big bowl of warm water with some soap and a washcloth in, then gets to work giving her a gentle wash while Billy looks her over. "Fuck, we're going to have to cut this one open to get the puss out. It's going to hurt. I'll give you a shot of morphine. But it's still going to hurt, okay?"

Once he's done washing her Marlon holds her hand and purrs with lips pressed to her fevered temple while Billy works reopening injuries to clean them and close them. A few times her breath hitches and a few pained whimpers escape her. Otherwise, she's as mute as Marlon. When Billy's done Marlon dresses her in his softest shirt. She drowns in it but it covers her and is easy to remove to redress the injuries. He leaves her briefly to go fetch her something to eat. He meets Phillip only a few feet from his door. Phillip holds out a bowl of soup to him and gives him an awkward pat then turns to walk away. Marlon brings the soup to Naomi and spoon-feeds it to her. After she's eaten he bids her lay down again, tucks her in under the down comforter and lies down beside her still fully dressed on top of his own comforter. When Charles opens the door to look inside Marlon growls a threatening warning. Charles backs out and closes the door. Naomi falls asleep and Marlon soon follows, still purring his lie of all-is-well.

In the morning he leaves her to go get her breakfast. He runs into Charles who smells of annoyance. Without a word, Marlon pulls him close into a clinging hug. He burrows his nose against Charles' neck. Before he knows it he's crying again. The annoyance in Charles' scent disappears and he coos comfortingly, rocking Marlon.

It's almost ironic that Charles is the one to lead him to the kitchen and make him eat when Marlon's cried himself out. Marlon has no appetite whatsoever but lets himself be fed, the same way Naomi did. When he's done he gives Charles an affectionate rub then makes breakfast for Naomi and goes upstairs. He cares for her and any time he leaves the room he finds Charles sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for him.

Marlon doesn't speak. He doesn't use words. He feels like speech has died inside of him. What’s the point? There is no point. His daughter is dead.

On the day of the burning, he makes another dreadful discovery he would have made earlier if he hadn't been so focused on Anna when he came home and went down to the cellar. One of the Os laid out for burning is Clara. Laurent had mentioned a pregnant O that had been sent home and Clara's belly has a noticeable bump. It's pure horror to discover her on a pyre. Laurent's by her, petting her hair gently.

Numbly Marlon walks up to them. Laurent looks up when he approaches. He smells of mourning. "I was courting her. I keep thinking that if we'd been mated already she wouldn't have been there… but I wanted to wait until you got back. I wanted your blessing. Silly, huh? ... She was pregnant when she came home. Told me she'd only been with one Alpha. I was so excited to be the father of her kit since I can't… can't… you know." He chuckles sadly at a memory. "She said 'are you Mar's Laurent? In that case, I like you and we're going to be best friends.' And I? I fell like a tree for her. She made a stuttering fool out of me but she saw past it. She saw my actions instead. Said that you taught her to see what people did instead of what they said. Took you and Sean as an example. You were grumpy and mean-mouthed to him but kept doting on him to make him fit in and feel at home... I miss her terribly. So terribly, Mar."

Marlon nearly asks if it's true that she'd only been with one guy but he fears what the answer would mean. Instead, he caresses her bump, kisses her goodbye on the forehead then kisses the crown of Laurent's head in a belated blessing to the mateship. Then he leaves the pair to say his last goodbye to Anna.

There are too many pyres. When they light them Naomi stands beside him. She's running a fever and should be in bed but nobody would deny another their grief. Most city dwellers don't have the luxury of having ritualistic burnings like this. Most go to the pyre to pay their respect after the pyre truck has taken the dead away for burning. Others bring their own dead to the pyre, saying their goodbyes beforehand. Only rural people and landowners made personal pyres. Of course, in war, anyone would accept a mass burning or a quick salt and burn. The most important thing was to help the dead cross over. Technically, they _could_ find their way on their own but there's no guarantee.

After the burning, they gather around Jed. Naomi surprises them by speaking. "What will happen to me now? I was assigned here to care for your kits, but now..."

Jed looks at her thoughtfully. "You're not a prisoner here if you think that. But there are people out there who want to kill you for surviving and I don't like the thought of you leaving us. Do you have any family? People that might be targeted in search of you."

Naomi shakes her head. "No, Sir."

"Could you tell us what happened that day?" Aiden asks. Trust him to go for the essentials.

"I don't really know. Mistress Jane came and told me all of us had been called to City Hall immediately. She never told me why. Mister Phillip and she got into a shouting match when he refused to come along and she refused to stay. We left without him. At the end of the bridge, there was a police roadblock. They wouldn't let any cars pass so we continued on foot. There was some large disturbance to the east so the streets were mostly empty. Suddenly we stopped. I walked to the front to find that the former soldiers amongst us were agitated and nervous. There was a round metal object on the cobbles in the middle of the road in front of us. They said it looked like a landmine. I made my way back to the middle where the kits were and suddenly I heard a metallic clang behind us. Someone shouted that another one came rolling out from an alley behind. We had the time to be confused since a thrown landmine should have exploded on impact but it hadn’t, then there was a hissing sound from both sides and I could smell something akin to lemon that made me sneeze. When my nose cleared i couldn’t smell _anything_.”

“So they used a chemical weapon. Those are rarely used outdoors unless they can be detonated closeby the target. They will render you completely noseblind for days but cause no further damages. I’m surmising that they used it for the shock value since they also used scent blockers,” Jed explains. “Please, go on. What happened next?”

“Then we were swarmed by masked, armoured people. They were going for the kits first and I could see that even the seasoned warriors like Mistress Sandra and Mistress Clara were having trouble fighting them off. The attackers were many, big, and effective. They knew what they were doing and wore some kind of mesh that made it next to impossible to penetrate their uniforms with claws or my knife. The kits were cheeping. They were _cheeping_ and the attackers still―” her face crumbles, scent lacing with distress and sorrow. Marlon pulls her into a hold to let her cry against his shoulder, doing his very best not to imagine the pure terror the kits must have felt. He himself has never encountered the gas bombs described, but he knows people who have. They’ve told him they felt disoriented, sneezed repeatedly, and then panicked for a moment when they realised they were noseblind. It had scared them. Those were experienced warriors. Sandra, Clara, and the others would have been temporarily confused and panicked before they got their shit together and if their attackers were skilled warriors like them, it would have been enough of an edge.

Jed lifts his head and whistles a bird call. One guard climbs down from the wall surrounding the property and comes running. When she’s standing to attention in front of him, asking “ _Mrrt_?” Jed unbuttons her outer layer and turns her around to face Naomi.

“Naomi, were they wearing mesh like this?” he says and indicates the protective mesh-shirt the guard is wearing under her outer layer of clothing.

Naomi looks up and dries her eyes, lips still trembling. She nods.

“To your eyes, would you say the attackers had military training?”

Naomi nods again. “They moved cohesively and barely communicated aside from short tweets at each other.”

“Can you remember how those tweets sounded like?”

Naomi’s eyes move as if she’s watching a memory, then she makes a series of coded commands and alerts that make all of them shift, the scent of upset feelings spreading in the pack. That’s American military codes. Only a few would make sense to civilians - sharp warnings of right and left or behind you, but the rest were sounds made by elite career soldiers.

“That’s enough. Thank you, Naomi,” Jed says. “As for what happens to you now? I would want you to stay here for the time being but you’re free to leave. We won’t hurt you. But if you leave we won’t protect you. What do you want?”

Naomi’s face hardens. “I want those responsible to burn in eternal hellfire, Sir. The kits were _cheeping_.”

Jed nods. “Until you’ve healed you’re a guest of ours. After that, if you have no plans of converting lifestyle, we’ll discuss employment.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Jed looks around. “Sean! Contact Karen. I want to know if there’s been an elite task force suddenly diverted from the front. If not, I want a list of every career soldier who has been jailed for any crime resulting in discharge the last decade. I want to know whom of them have suddenly been pardoned or broken out of jail recently. I want a list of anyone discharged for psychological unfitness after years of service. It takes a special kind of twisted mind to murder cheeping kits. We’re hunting these demons down and finding out who paid them…” He rattles out a number of orders to the pack, calling for meetings with the leadership of every large or semi-large pack in the state, calling for a meeting with the Californian Talons. He’s smelling blood and going for it.

Marlon should be excited to finally get to strike back.

But he’s not. He’s still not out of the cold, dark void threatening to overtake him like frost creeping inward from the edges of a window. There are only two things keeping him from sitting down in a corner and never getting up again. His mate Charles, and the stubborn determination to see to that the only survivor of the massacre remains a survivor. He _needs_ to save Naomi like he couldn’t save his daughter. He’s riddled with guilt. For not being there. For the fact that the man he loves― _loved_ ―is the one ultimately responsible for the murder of the most important person in his life - his daughter. Finn killed Anna. Even if he sat several states away, pulling strings to make others take the desired action, disconnected from the micromanagement, it was still him behind it all.

Marlon thrives on being right. But not like this.

Not like this.

* * *


	28. Permafrost Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The death of Anna takes a heavy toll on Marlon's emotions. It drives him to make a cold-hearted decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter pissed off my lovely Beta [YouCantKeepMeDown](http://archiveofourown.org/users/YouCantKeepMeDown). Rightfully, since Marlon has the makings of a villain and this is a chapter when it gets clear why. We see the side of him that so clearly demonstrate why people are and should be afraid of him. Because the world does not change and bend to the will of good boys.
> 
> I'm forever grateful for my Beta. Without her, there would be a lot more holes in my story and i wouldn't even know it. She hasn't published in a while, but if you're an archangel fan and haven't read her stuff, pay her a visit. <3

* * *

One of the guards recognises the lonely traveller walking down the road towards the estate gates and alerts the others, adding delighted yips to his call. The gates are opened to let him in and Phillip comes striding out of the mansion. “You’re late!” He calls out when the traveller enters the gates and starts down the gravelled driveway. “Don’t want to be tardy. They don’t like that, oh no. Come on, boy! I swear, you youngsters don’t know how to rush it.”

Marlon can’t see it but he can hear it through the open window of the conference room. These days their mansion takes in guests and only individual rooms are off-limits to outsiders. Marlon shares his room with Charles now that Naomi has healed up. Aiden and Amara sleep with them in his bed often enough, but some nights when Amara shares their bed Marlon will go to Jed’s room instead. Jed’s room reeks of rage even when Jed’s asleep but when he’s in a meeting or handing out orders he smells neutral. Marlon wonders if he’ll ever master the art of scent masking the way Jed does. As it is, people sneeze in Marlon’s vicinity often enough for how angry he is all the time. Oddly enough, it was Jed’s constant rage that had allowed him to tap into his own anger. Siphoning Jed lets him immerse himself in anger, holding him above the surface of guilt and grief. 

Charles gets panicky if you restrain him in bed. You can hold his wrists, but if he tries to move them and Marlon holds on, there’s instant fear in his scent. It’s okay. Marlon can do sweet lovemaking as well as anyone. So what if he himself wants something else once in a while? As long as his mate is happy. Plus, anytime he sleeps with Jed that need is more than amply fulfilled. Their bonding-sex is a forceful and aggressive affair. Sean had shared the bed once when they got into it and Sean had gotten out of bed to sit on a chair watching them until they were done. ‘You were both flaring so intensely I couldn’t see your pupils. I have enough self-preservation to get out of the way.’ Honestly, Marlon didn’t even know he could amp his flare up to that high luminosity. But it makes sense. Both of them are burdened with heavy guilt that translates into fury and both have the same need to act on it while at the same time thinking they deserve any pain caused to them. As a result, sex is brutal and leaves them with more injuries than most actual fights.

The conference room is filled with Mains, Patriarchs, and representatives for packs whose leaders can’t be here in person. While Marlon was still numb-stricken by his grief, caring for Naomi, Jed and Sean had emptied most of their bank accounts and prompted everyone else to do so. They now have bars of gold, diamonds, other valuables, and weapons stashed in the cellar. It’s good that they did put securing their assets as their first order of business, because days after any and all Packrunner accounts country-wide had been frozen. It’s another bullcrap law quickly put in place. Marlon can barely keep up with all the new laws. Not that it matters since they no longer follow any laws but their own. He tears his gaze from the blue sky outside to address the gathering. “We need journalists. Media. We need media that isn’t in the pocket of the government. I don’t care if the journalists hate us, as long as they portray what happens as impartial as possible.”

“We can start producing more films that counter the portrayal they’re giving us,” Ayita Talon says. “We’ve stopped showing anything Conservative-centric in our cinemas. In response, they made it illegal to show any movies or films not sanctioned by the government. We countered by making the entrance to unsanctioned movies free and protecting any movie-goers from being arrested coming and going from the cinema. But we’ve been focusing on making productions that will appeal to all designations. We need more Packrunner-focused productions.” The Talons in California own and control the lion’s share of the booming movie industry.

“Maybe get a film crew to do a documentary series depicting what’s been done to us and the Progs? Showing the unjust persecution of both designations,” Marlon says.

“Why should we care about what’s been done to the Progs? They can all die for all I care,” someone further down the table says.

Marlon refrains from growling. “Because what’s being done to them is a testament of how skillfully we’ve been manipulated by Conservatives over the years. Packrunners and Progressives have been allied since the start. They were the traders and we, their guards. They shared their bounty and helped trade our produce for us in return of protection. They weren’t afraid of us. The oldest Prog settlement is ringed by three pack territories. The fear is something new. While we’ve always considered them an odd bunch for self-stunting, we have it in us to let people be who they are as long as they pay their peers the same respect. The fear and mutual loathing is new and comes from insidious propaganda that we’ve fallen for just as much as they did. Only, when we fell for it we became what the propaganda claimed we were. Even if we didn’t necessarily harm them ourselves, we’ve turned a blind eye to what’s been done to them. They’ve been killed on open streets, had their homes stolen, been forced to wear identifiers so they could be shunned in schools and workplaces. They’ve been driven to live in fear in gated communities. And we did nothing. If we leave them out of it, we’re just as bad as the people who are trying to do the same to us. I want to be the monster under the bed to the heartless, rich Conservatives who are doing this to us, not to a stunted little kit beginning its life in misery.”

“Well spoken, Ares,” says a voice from the door.

Marlon’s gaze snaps to the door so fast he nearly gets a crick in the neck. “Arvid!” He barely believes the input from his eyes and nose. Arvid’s there. His clothes are dusty and travel-worn. He’s fatigued but otherwise in good health. Marlon’s having so many feelings rapid fire he can’t really settle on one.

“Sorry I’m late,” Arvid grins and comes inside. “My company took one last mission down in Texas. The Teyshas paid us a symbolic sum and the Commander told us we were welcome to sit this one out since it was pennies to what we were usually paid. But he was going there so naturally, all of us came along. I’m happy to tell you that the Union is successfully driven out of Texas and even better, Packrunners are firmly in control of the government over there.”

Jed smiles warmly. "That's brilliant news. Come on in and take a seat."

"Who is he?" someone whispers.

Arvid hears it. "I'm Arvid Mattson, formerly a Captain of one of the mercenary companies that have harried you so badly for the Union's count. Now I'm here to Siderun for Marlon Williams, and…" he digs into his pocket and pulls something out. He throws it on the table. Pendants, brooches, and charms clatter and spill everywhere. Stars in gold, silver, bronze, wood and stone, bloodied, broken and buckled, all of them. Arvid drops fangs and smirks evilly. There are mean sniggers in response to the meaning of the trophies before them.

"You mean you're here to Siderun for the Williams pack?" someone asks.

Jed chuckles. "I think he meant it exactly the way he phrased it. Arvid, can you tell us where the rest of the mercenaries went? We have heard nothing about any activity since you pulled back."

"Not really. We all went to different continents since there are many wars going on. What I can tell you is that you won't see any mercenaries here until after the civil war. Aside from American ones returning home that is. We all have a paragraph in our contract stipulating that we can't be made to break previous promises. And since we're all Packrunners we have to adhere to the first rule." He winks. "We can be made to fight other Packrunners but when we as a designation are threatened with extinction we won't do it."

"But you pulled out before we declared war," someone points out.

Arvid gives them an unimpressed look. "This shit is decades in the making. Just because you just woke up and smelled the roses doesn't mean this is something new. The Commander has seen this happen before in other countries and has been worried about how things develop here in America. When he heard about a law that made a whole pack be judged for the actions of single pack members, he said Packrunning would be eradicated in America within five to ten years if nobody fought back now. That's why we pulled out. As a mercenary, we live on war. But every single one of us has an idea of a day when we retire, find a new pack, maybe get a family. But we can't do that if there aren't any packs left. And some of us like America and want to retire here so it's time we kick some ass to save all of our futures."

"So why don’t you all come to fight for us?" someone asks.

Arvid sits down and leans back in his chair. “If you pay us, I’m sure we will. But a wolf’s got to eat, and any time we’ve approached Americans with an offer you’ve turned us down.”

Aiden plucks a brooch up from the table and holds it up before himself, flipping it over and over inspecting it. “How does it look in the rest of the country?” he asks. 

“Not good. Something must have happened fairly recently because every state is pulling the same bullshit against Packrunners as they have against Progs and doing it quickly. The expropriation is hitting packs hard, laws are being instated to make anyone with our lifestyle criminalized one way or another. Something must have happened recently because they’re no longer trying to be discreet about it. Depending on the state and area the people are reacting to it differently…” Arvid goes on to paint a picture of both mass-arrests, townspeople protecting their packs, city people selling them out, restriction laws of ownership for packs. The list goes on and on. And measures are taken to stop news from reaching people at the front. 

The question comes up as to why the Conservatives are in such a hurry suddenly and Ayita Talon theorizes that the Conservative leadership might have counted on the Union keeping everyone distracted. With the Teyshas taking the lead pushing the Union out of Texas, many of the new laws that were said to be instated due to the war are no longer needed and the public will start to make a fuss. _Especially_ since the Union can no longer reinforce their dig-ins inland, and with the mercenaries suddenly gone in Canada the Union is having problems. 

Jed nods his agreement. “I think they counted on the war lasting much longer. Of us being caught up in a deadlock for years. That way they could have kept framing all packs acting up as us simply being violent for no reason. By the end of the war when we returned from the front the public’s view of us would have been abysmal and distrusting. Every single restriction to control us would look right in the common person’s eye. Just look at their failed attempt to force the Hales and us into a pack war. Had we not made the promises we made to each other and there truly hadn’t been a single survivor we would have eradicated the Hales from the face of the earth in retaliation. And what we read about the massacre in the news is pure propaganda. Most of the city fully believe the Hales slaughtered our kits and Os. And it makes sense for them to try to seize the Hale kits before we went to war with them because they know a pack that has just lost all their kits will be very likely to adopt orphans in general. Marlon did warn us about how adamant the Conservatives are to shape the minds of the young. They wouldn’t let us simply adopt the Hale kits who chose to cheep rather than fight.”

Arvid makes a time out gesture, eyes wide and concerned. “Your kits are dead?”

“Everyone we’d left at home. You didn’t know?” Marlon answers.

Arvid shakes his head and gives him a look filled with compassion, sadness saturating his scent. “No. News reached us that both you and the Talons had suddenly deserted but we just assumed it was because of what’s going on in the country. Did you get the guilty party? If not, can I be part of the task force to hunt them down?”

“That would be appreciated,” Jed answers. “We’ll brief you when we break for lunch.”

When the lunch break comes around Marlon pulls Arvid aside but puts a hand on his chest to keep him away when he goes for a hug. Arvid stops and looks at him questioningly. Marlon takes a deep breath. “I know what you said about the Light, but…” He shifts, looks away, then straightens his back and meets Arvid’s gaze determinately. “The Conservatives that had been stationed with us to help with the kits were also killed. There was only one survivor and she nearly died protecting my daughter and the other kits. I spent a lot of energy making sure she wouldn't die. If a single Conservative will survive this war it's going to be her. If you can't accept that then you came back in vain."

Arvid gives him a half amused, half soft expression. "You misunderstood what I was trying to say. A God is the sum of their followers' actions since that's the main power they wield in this world. But a _person_ is also the sum of their actions no matter what designation they are. I give you power over me, and if you align yourself to an entity that I consider evil I'll have to take that power away for my own peace of mind. But if you forge friendships with people of an evil faith that act in a way that merits that friendship it's another thing. I'm friendly with several Conservatives too and would go out of my way to see that they get to live good lives. It’s not a dealbrea― _Ouff!_ ” Marlon doesn’t let him finish the sentence before he tackles him into a hug marking him up with needy sounds of affection.

“You came back. You came back. You came back,” he keeps repeating face pressed against Arvid’s neck.

Arvid chuckles, hugging back. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

Aiden comes walking behind Arvid. “That’s why he didn’t believe you. According to his backwards logic, it equalled the last time he’d see you. Our parents also promised they’d come back.”

Arvid spins them around so he can face Aiden without letting go of Marlon. “Yeah? Sadly not everyone can have my fail rate at dying. I’ve done my best and yet I can’t seem to go belly u…” He trails off, trading the joking tone for a much more somber one. “Bad timing. I apologise. I’d been looking forward to getting to know Anna and I don’t have any words that will make it any easier for you.”

“You’re here. That’s enough,” Marlon mumbles, eyes closed taking deep breaths of Arvid’s scent.

Aiden wraps his arms around both of them to greet Arvid, giving him a temple rub. “I’ve never been so happy to see you before. Welcome home, my friend.”

All their scents do complicated things when Aiden says that. But Marlon’s too numbed by his emotional wasteland to figure out how the other two are feeling about it since Arvid doesn’t answer it with words or sounds. But it feels right, and for a moment he reflects on how far Aiden and Arvid’s relationship has evolved for him to say that.

When they finally break the hug Arvid holds on to Marlon’s upper arms. “How are you holding up?” he asks.

Marlon shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s like everything inside has frozen to ice. I struggle to feel anything at all and when I do, it’s anger.”

Arvid nods in understanding. “Been there. I wish I could tell you it gets better but it took a long time for me to feel anything resembling human again. In fact, I think I didn’t even start healing until the son of a god came and got me in the underworld.” He smiles briefly but his eyes remain serious. “Some parts of me are irrevocably changed and damaged, though. All I can tell you is that grief and anger shouldn’t be rushed through, and that I offer you any help you need to get revenge or simply to keep existing. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks… I don’t know what I need. Right now I just want to set the world on fire. I feel so damn guilty. I wasn’t there. I know how I felt about my own parents leaving me. They always said they did it to protect me and I didn’t buy it. Then I went and did the same thing. It made sense to me at the moment. First college, then going undercover, then driving the Unionists away. I did it to protect her but I wasn’t _there_.” Marlon’s vowed that if he’s ever blessed with kits again he’ll never not be there for them. “Anyway, we could definitely need your expertise hunting her murderers down,” he says when he sees Jed and Sean approach to brief Arvid.

Arvid nods. “Then that’s what I’ll do. Is Laurent still alive?”

Aiden chuckles. “Don’t worry, your other boy’s fine. In mourning like the rest of us but in prime health.”

For a moment Marlon reacts to how Aiden phrases that. But then Jed and Sean’s there and there’s no time to ponder what Aiden meant by that.

* * *

“Are you going to ask him to be your mate?”

Marlon rolls his eyes and keeps walking. “Aide, I just lost my kit and you’re already pestering me about getting another mate? Give me some darn time.”

“Are you kidding me? You barely say a word then he shows up and the first thing you do is pour out your innermost feelings with complete honesty. Your interactions the last couple of weeks? You two have the healthiest darn relationship I’ve seen. And last night you two were making rough love while Chuck sat in the same room writing by the desk, purring in pure contentment. Chuck’s one of the most jealous people in the pack but he’s decided Arvid’s so great he doesn’t mind sharing.” Aiden’s striding along gesturing with his hands, trying to convince him. “Are you afraid he’s going to say no?”

Marlon stops with a sigh and turns to face his brother. “No. I’m not. But I―” He stops to scratch thoughtfully behind the ear while he thinks. Aiden has that open and earnest expression that means he’s trying to understand to a higher degree than he’s pushing his agenda. “I like courting, okay? I want to do it right. With Charles, I had no choice. I _had_ to have him. I needed him. It didn’t matter that we were in the middle of a war. But if I’d ask Arvid to get mated now it would feel like a mating of convenience. I’d like to romance him properly and I can’t do that while in my current state of mind at the same time as we’re fighting for our lives. I think I need him to be one of my closest friends more than I need him to be my mate right now.”

“I’m certain Arvid has no trouble being both.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure I can do both right now.” To get mated they'd have to siphon each other and Marlon doesn't want Arvid to feel anything but completely loved and adored when that happens. If they'd do it now Arvid would instead tap directly into the frozen, hateful wasteland inside of him. A place that can mimic emotions but is separated from them by a cold wall. He's hounded by nightmares reconstructing the ambush from Naomi's description and the injuries he'd seen on Anna's body. Phillip had patched everyone up post mortem. He’d stitched them and cleaned them, dressed them in nice clothes and combed their hair. According to Naomi, he’d been talking to himself all the time. Arguing. ‘Don’t tell me what to do, woman! I’m a grown man, I know what I’m doing! ...Okay, this isn’t working. What am I doing wrong?... Tssk. Why didn’t you say so from the beginning so I didn’t have to waste my time?’ Despite all that, peeking under the clothes had still revealed gruesome details that haunt Marlon. Sometimes his dreams combine memories and he finds Anna as a faceless kitling in the ruins of a bombed building. Sometimes Anna got jumped by two Snatchers while walking home from school through the city. Marlon hears her call but he’s too late to save her. 

He has another disturbing dream that repeats itself, that merges another memory with pure fiction. Anna is an adult―a slim, red-haired woman he’s never seen in his life but knows is Anna―they’re both in uniform, stalking the vast Canadian forests together, patrolling in search of enemies. She’s presented and is past the aversion period, she doesn’t even have the pack bond left. She shouldn’t be there with him. She shouldn’t, because the pull between them is out of this world. He’s had an erection for two hours that he’s trying to ignore, every gland on both of them are leaking profusely and the scent of her slick is driving him to distraction. ‘You know, Mar… we’re not really related,’ she says. He argues. You don’t mount an O you’ve raised. Besides, his condoms are back in camp. ‘I’m weeks away from my Heat. It’s next to impossible for me to get pregnant.’ Does she even know how to fight while knotted should an enemy surprise them? ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been knotted. But think about it. As it is they’ll smell us from miles away, and if they don’t they’ll wonder why their hair suddenly stands on end and they’ll find us by the electric tension between us. You can knot outside. It’ll be quick and we won’t be so damned distracted by each other once we get it out of our system.’ He never could tell her no when she had set her mind on something anyway. It takes 5 stolen minutes and once they get back on safe territory they wash away the scent of their sin in a stream. Still, Jed takes one look at them and knows. He sends Anna away but doesn’t say anything about it. You don’t talk about that taboo once the line is crossed.

When Marlon wakes up from those dreams he’s distraught. Some things he’s not ready to examine more closely because if he does the tragedy will be worse and his failure greater. Yet he knows the woman in the dream isn’t really his daughter.

Aside from the nightmares Marlon has memory problems and bouts of confusion. It’s mostly when it comes to doing stuff. When he’s in meetings his brain works just fine but the other day he stood in the kitchen and couldn’t for his life remember how to make hot chocolate. The day before he’d verbally gotten a list of things that needed to be fixed around the estate and forgotten most of them. And he cries for no reason. This morning he saw that a potted flower in one of the sitting rooms had wilted and started crying, his inside screaming for Charles to come to comfort him but at the same time he was terrified that Charles would see him crying over a wilted flower. Jed had walked in on him, pulling him into a hug without asking, telling him ‘This is what we take with us from war.’

He’s had three violent explosions of rage over exactly nothing, sending everyone fleeing the room, including Charles. That enraged him further because his mate should know he could never truly hurt him. Arvid, on the other hand, had been drawn to the room while he was thrashing it and managed to calm him down. Not by talking sense to him but by joining him in the insanity, pointing out furniture he’d missed to destroy, helping him without fearing him.

Phillip and Arvid are the two who have managed to bring back moments of laughter into Marlon’s life. When Arvid was in Heat last week Phillip trailed after him deep-purring, all puffed up with fangs dropped and a bright flare. 

Seeing the bony, 200+ year-old, reed-thin, owl haired man go into complete knothead mode made Marlon snigger. He’d called out, 'Don't do it, Phillip. You'll get stuck. It’s awful!’ and Phillip had stopped, muttered that Marlon was right and gone another way. Only, the next time Phillip wandered past Arvid’s fresh trail he’d lifted his head to sniff, head turning to follow before his body did, right back at deep-purring an increasingly bewildered Arvid again. Marlon had laughed a full-on belly laugh. 

Arvid is hedonistic by nature and Marlon’s state of mind prevents him from giving Arvid what he wants as often as he wants it. But Arvid straight up asked him ‘Are we exclusive or can I fool around? If so, are there people who are off limits or can I only be with specific people?’ Without preamble he let Marlon decide so Marlon said ‘If I’m not up for it I’ll allow it’. It pissed Aiden off because Aiden doesn’t think Marlon has any say in who Arvid sleeps with. But Arvid thinks so and that’s what matters. Arvid will shut down anyone attempting to kiss him with ‘Keep that tongue in your own mouth where it belongs. I’m not a damn Prog!’ But he’ll kiss Marlon. It’s a thing that gives Marlon butterflies just like kissing Charles does.

So Aiden is right. Mating Arvid is the right thing to do. "Besides, I don't want to mate Arvid like a darn health insurance," Marlon adds. 

“That’s what you ordered Jed to do when you brought him back,” Aiden retorts, scowling.

“I did. And see how much good that did him,” Marlon spits back and starts walking again, anger flaring up like a furnace inside. Jed had gotten 3 mates just like Marlon had told him. Now they’re all dead. Jane in the attack and the other two in the war with the Union. “You were the one who told me it was stupid to order anyone to get mated for practical purposes and I was the one naive enough to think it a valid reason. Don’t you dare try to turn the tables now.” Not only were Jed’s mates dead, he’d lost a kit in the attack. Sean had lost a kit too. But Sean was melancholy and Jed was caught in perpetual fury - Marlon’s the one handling the loss worst of all, penduling between rage, sorrow, and an emotional flatline.

“Yes, of course, you’re right. But.” Aiden draws breath between the sentences. “Look, Mar, I overheard Jed and Sean talking. We’re having an Omega shortage in the pack. I’m sure you’ve noticed. And currently, there’s not a single one left that is naturally suited to be a Main. Currently, we don’t really have one.”

“Myra’s Main,” Marlon states.

“That was two days ago. Today it’s Jenny. A week ago it was Leoh. They’re challenging each other _not_ to be in the top position. And let’s face it, the best leader amongst them is Myra but she’s at her best as a second in command. The moment she’s at the top she crumbles under the pressure.”

Marlon compresses his lips to a thin line. “What do you want me to do about it?” It is a problem but who needs a Main anyway?

“What do you think? We have a Siderunning O who knows how to handle stress, can handle all the high ranking Alphas in the pack, both knowing when to shut up and listen and when to give us a cuff on the head and tell us to shape up. The problem is that this particular O isn’t bonding with us since his sole loyalty lies with you. And you know having a Siderunning Main is far from ideal. Heck, I don’t think he’d even accept the position if you didn’t ask him and not unless you’re mated because he’s well aware that a Main’s pack bond trumps any friendship bonds.”

When Marlon met Arvid they called him a breeder. He was deemed insane. He’s changed over the years, put the pieces of himself back together to the point where he’s considered to be Main material. And what is Marlon? A broken shell of a being, filled with permafrost and active volcanoes. He's constantly struggling to not just… _stop_. He's nothing but a burden to his pack most of the time. And now? He's got value to them. His value lies solely in how he's the key to recruiting _someone else_ to the pack. If he could just be with Anna...

Aiden smells his rapid shift of mood. He must have. Marlon can't find another reason as to why Aiden suddenly reeks of fear and slams him up against the wall to cup his cheeks with worried eyes. "Hey, hey, hey, none of that. That's the grief talking. Don't listen to it. Whatever it's saying, it's lying. Wherever you go I'll follow, okay? No exceptions. Stay with me. Just stay with me, okay?" He marks Marlon up and presses his lips against Marlon’s, trying to coax him into sharing a rare kiss. Marlon feels completely bewildered and disoriented. He can barely remember what they were talking about. For a beat, that scares him, then it makes him angry. “That’s it. That’s my boy. Get angry,” Aiden says and grabs him by the neck, leaning their foreheads together. “Listen, Mar, you don’t want to mate Arvid, don’t. Nobody’s going to force you. Forget I said anything. Just stay with me, okay?”

Oh, right. That’s what they were talking about. “I’m not mating anyone until I can guarantee that I can protect them and no government is going to try to steal my kits.” He shoves Aiden off to keep walking. He has that eerie feeling he’s forgotten something, that something happened, but he doesn’t ask why since it scares him. He’d rather be angry.

Later that day he overhears Aiden exchange worried words with Jed and Charles about how he’d spaced out and his scent had started to fade away. He knows he has to do something about it but doesn’t know what.

That night he goes to Sandra’s room that she shared with her daughter. He sits on the bed and scoots himself to lean against the backrest. “Anna? It’s your papa. I don’t know if you’re here but I didn’t know where else to look for you.” He looks around the room, hoping in vain for some confirmation that she’s there. There’s only silence answering him. He swallows. “I know… I know I was away for the greatest part of your life. I want you to know that I didn’t want to be… I love you so much I don’t have words to express it, and not a day has gone by since you were born that I didn’t think of you.” Another pause that leaves him feeling silly for trying to talk to someone beyond. They could be present. He’s certain Aunt Luci has visited him at least once. He needs Anna to be here and listen to him. 

“I would have written you a letter and burnt it for you but since you can’t read…” He takes a deep breath and swallows past the lump in his throat. “I, uh, I’ve written you a couple of stories. Fairytales. I’m hoping you’ll come sit by my side,” he pats the bed beside him and adjusts the pillow so a small kit can sit comfortably, “so I can read them to you. I wrote them while I was off fighting against the Union. Do you want to hear them?” He pauses again, flares and purrs a parental all-is-well. He waits for as long it would take for a kit to climb up on the bed and snuggle close. He looks at the place beside him where he’s hoping she is and smiles. “You ready? Okay.” He takes his notebook hidden inside his shirt where he’d kept it in case Charles would have woken up to wonder where he was going, and starts to read. About halfway he’s gotten a sense of calm he hasn’t had since he the news of Anna’s death reached him. He’s sure he hears distant giggles beside him when he reads the funny parts, and for a moment he could have sworn he sees her in his peripheral vision, but when he turns his head to look there’s only emptiness. Still, he chooses to believe his daughter is there with him right now.

Once he’s finished reading the first story he closes the notebook and smiles at where Anna’s sitting. “I’m going to read one story to you every night until you’ve heard them all. After that… I would like you to make a very brave choice for me. Maybe it’s too much to ask, but I need to ask it of you anyway.” He takes a deep breath and looks at the ceiling. “I want to be in the same world as you. I’m constantly on the verge to follow you to the other side. But if I do, all Packrunners in America will die. There will be no more packs…” Well. That might be hubris. But hadn’t Phillip cryptically implied that that was the case? Either their pack would survive and all Packrunning die out, or their pack would die but Packrunning would survive. “Without any packs, we have no future. And since I need to be in the same world as you… I’d like to ask you to, when I’ve read all my stories to you, to be one of the brave souls who choose to be reborn.” He looks back at the place his ghost-kit’s sitting. “Think about it. Discuss it with your mother. Because if you’re reborn in this world then it’s in this world I need to be.” It would mean they won’t recognise each other if they meet again, but it would also mean Anna would get a second chance of growing up and having a good, full life. He might never meet her again if she grows up and ends up running with another pack. She might stay with them in the afterlife. But it would be worth it.

* * *

"It's so frustrating! It's like they don't get that this is a national crisis. The attack on us was funded by Larkinson in Iowa, for Ares' sake. It was coordinated with the attempted seizing and the roadblock on the bridge. Jacobs and Perelli worked with Larkinson. And yet the dense Hales refuse to leave the city!" Marlon sputters angrily. Jacobs and Perelli are both NY politicians, and Jacobs is one of those who’d been taking money from the Williams pack to do their bidding. Arvid had done a good job hunting down the former soldiers who murdered the kits and Os, and an even better job to get them to talk. He’d brought back nearly every one of them alive, except for the last four who’d gotten wind of their colleagues going AWOL all the sudden and therefore had barricaded themselves in, booby-trapping their chosen hideout. Two pack members had died trying to get to them, and not even with Arvid leading the expedition had they managed to take them alive. Marlon didn’t feel a single thing when the bodies of his pack members were brought back for burning. His world is consumed by the task of making the world safe for Anna’s rebirth. Nothing else matters.

"They've always been very bound to their territory,” Aiden says. “We shouldn’t be surprised. We’ll find another way. There’s bound to be Packrunners around that will gladly act as messengers.”

Marlon shakes his head. “No. If we can’t unite the packs of New York, how are we supposed to unite the whole country? It has to be them. And most of them are willing to do what’s needed. It’s their darn Main and Patriarch who is the problem. They want to stick around here to fix the problem in our home city and state before they expand to the rest of the country, refusing to see that it isn’t a problem that can be fixed locally. And if we try to do it their way this civil war will last as long as the Union war. Only the Conservatives outnumber us and the longer we wait the more ground they will gain. We can’t afford that. The Hale leadership will need to be replaced.”

Aiden’s eyes widen in surprise. He throws a look at Sean who’s sitting silently on a chair by the conference table listening to them. The conference room is empty save for the three of them now that the meeting is over. Aiden and Marlon are both standing close to the head of the table. “That’s inter-pack politics. Who leads them is none of our business,” Aiden argues when Sean doesn’t give any input.

“Like heck it isn’t.” Marlon stomps towards one of the maps of America lying on the table, picks up a pencil and draws an oval that puts a border from Jacksonville to Greensboro in North Carolina, to Huntington in West Virginia, to Columbus in Ohio, up to capture Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal in Canada, down to Portland in Maine and through the ocean all the way back to Jacksonville. “ _This_ , is our current territory counting only pack borders and other dominant packs. According to pack tradition, the dominant packs decide who are allowed to keep territories inside their borders. For too long we’ve been lenient, following the economic models of Conservatives. The American map is a joke looking through present day pack perspective. The Anevays hold very little economic power but they rule Kansas and Nebraska according to the old tradition. They’d have no problem uniting the packs living there but they’re still somewhere in Canada fighting the Union because we don’t have enough messengers. We need to put the Hales in place and if unity wasn’t of such an import right now I’d tell them they need to bend the knee or move.” Their relationship with the Hales is at an all-time high. At this point, the Hales have about 50 members stationed on Long Island to help protect the Williams pack while the Williams provide them with weapons and necessities. Strong friendships have grown between members of both packs. And yet, the leaders refused to decimate their in-city strength to send members away to prompt other packs to come home from the front or to help unite packs in other states that are already in America.

“So what are you going to do? Challenge their Patriarch for the position?” Aiden says incredulously. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re down to 35 members. If I’d take over as a Patriarch of the Hale pack we’d suddenly be down to 31 members since I’d be taking Chuck, you’ve said you’d come with me anywhere, and I can’t get rid of Amara. There’s no way I’d demote myself by switching pack. Not only that, the Hales would be fully aware I was doing a power grab to steer them and they wouldn’t be trusting enough. No. It needs to be someone from within. Someone we can trust and control…”

Aiden shakes his head as if Marlon’s gone mad. “Who then? Corrine? Trumpet? Zane? Marquis? Boxer?”

Marlon purses his lips in thought, puts his hands behind his back and goes to look out the window where several Hales man the perimeter along with their own. He just came up with the idea of replacing the leaders so he hasn’t considered any names yet. His eyes fall on Boxer where she’s manning the gate with a serious face. She might work as a new Main. She’s not _quite_ independent enough to rule a pack but she’s trusting of the Williams and heeds their advice. She’d been part of Arvid’s task force and has the respect of the Hale pack. She’s high ranking enough not to be questioned if she challenges the current Main. But. She’s also shown signs of avarice that Marlon doesn’t like one bit. If they’d use her she might play along during the civil war but turn on them afterwards, hoping to claim their riches.

Arvid’s out there sitting on the wall. It’s not his guard shift but he often takes a spot on the wall anyway. As he says, ‘I’m not a political player like you, but I’ll contribute where I can.’ He’s wrong. He is a political player, often displaying insight and understanding of the bigger picture, thinking long-term and seeing consequences. The only reason Arvid doesn’t consider himself a political player is because he compares himself to Marlon, Jed, and that former Commander of his. Once the civil war is over Marlon will court him properly and he’ll be the perfect Main for the Williams pack. 

Someone’s coming. The window is closed but he can still faintly hear the whistle that travels down the perimeter from one guard to another. Arvid jumps off from the wall and Boxer gestures that the gate should be opened. It doesn’t take long for the car they’d given to the Hales to come to a stop outside and Laurent to get out. As he passes through the gate Arvid runs to greet him, sweeping him up in a hug.

Marlon turns away from the scene to face Aiden. “Laurent. It’s going to be Laurent.”

Aiden hitches a breath. “Have you lost your mind? Laurent’s not suited for that role. He’s too soft and gentle-minded. He’s already as high up in the hierarchy as he’s suited to be. Everyone above him knows it so the only way he _could_ gain the rank of Patriarch is by fighting his way to the top. Should he try to challenge the current Patriarch directly he’d be challenged right away if he won. The violent way to the top would be hell for him and the life of a leader would also be hell.”

“When I took him to the doctor he promised to do anything to pay me back,” Marlon counters.

“Yes, but you took him there to save him with no ulterior motive. He’s your best darn friend and asking this of him would be taking the life given, away from him again. Don’t do it, Mar. Don’t sacrifice him like this. He loves you like a brother. This is just plain cruel,” Aiden argues. He looks at Sean for support.

“Do you think he could win if he has to fight his way to the top?” Sean asks.

Marlon nods. “He’s a wily fighter. Aiden isn’t questioning his ability to gain the Patriarchship, but the mental toll it will take him to bear it.”

“So you’ll have to support him through it. But the Hales can’t know it’s you who put him up to it or he’ll have the same manner of distrust you’d have should you cross over to them.”

Aiden throws his hands up in frustration. “You don’t mean you’re supporting this lunacy?” he asks Sean with a betrayed expression smelling sad and angry.

“I do. Getting an agent into another pack is next to impossible. But Laurent is already so bound to Marlon he’d probably consider leaving the Hales if Marlon decided to form his own pack. That level of loyalty would be very useful in our relationship with the Hales. Especially since the Patriarchal bonds he’ll forge will wear on that loyalty. It’ll still be greater than any other Hale will grant us.”

Aiden shakes his head with a sour twist to his mouth. He goes to sit down by the table to face Sean. “Laurent is a gentle soul. He does what he has to do without any hesitation, but at any given time he’ll opt for a peaceful solution if there is any. He’d be suited as a Patriarch for a quiet upper-class pack or maybe a rural farmer pack. But the Hales are predators preying off the weak. They’re criminals who rule by fear and who often lose members to violent incidents. Laurent was born into that and knows to play that game but he was never truly comfortable doing the shit they do. He cares about people. Laurent has a lot of empathy. If we ask him to do this we’re asking him to take on emotional labour of insurmountable proportions. Someone gives their mate wanderlust? He’ll feel the suffering of both of them. Someone gets killed? He’ll share the mourning and bear guilt, questioning himself. Anyone who’s unhappy in the pack, he’ll feel it on a personal level. And he’d be taking on that burden with no backup. Their Main would be forced to accept him as her equal but only do it grudgingly since he fought himself to the rank. He doesn’t have a mate to ease his burden and he doesn’t have any close family left because the EB50 reaped most of his loved ones. On top of that, he’s already got one hell of a case of survivor’s guilt. Being the Patriarch would suck the will to live right out of him,” he argues, trying to convince Sean.

Sean frowns uncertainly and looks at Marlon. “Are you sure he can handle it?”

“Undoubtedly. And we can use his survivor’s guilt as leverage. He’s been beating himself up for not getting there in time to save Clara and Anna. I’m sure if we spin it the right way we can make this seem like a way for him to redeem his guilt,” Marlon answers.

Aiden’s scowling fiercely at him. “Even if they had made it there on time he wouldn’t have been able to save them and you know that. The men we hunted down were special forces, heavily armoured, with both firearms and chemical grenades at their disposal.”

“I know that. He also knows that. But at heart, he still thinks he could have done something if he was there on time.”

Aiden shakes his head in disbelief. “He’s our friend, Mar. He’s a friend of both of us. You can’t ask it of him.”

“If I can’t then maybe you should. And throw him a bone to soften the blow. He’s been wanting to be with you since the day he laid eyes on your red ones. Have a little roll in the hay with him.”

Aiden stands up. His anger tickles Marlon’s nose. “No. I won’t do that. He’s my friend.”

“I don’t see the problem. You’ve happily poked your penis into everyone who wants you since you presented.” An overstatement, but nearly true. “You like Laurent well enough. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

Aiden growls a frustrated warning. “What you’re talking about is gross and sinister emotional manipulation. This is way worse than what you did to Jed. At least that had a good intention. This is willfully destroying the life of someone you profess to love. I don’t get how you justify this to yourself.”

“15 years from now when my kits stroll through the slums, they’ll be safe because Laurent will guarantee it.”

Aiden’s nostrils flare. His lips a thin line. He shakes his head again. “This isn’t you, Mar. You do this kind of utter bullshit _for_ your friends, not _to_ them. This is too damned cold.” With that, he turns on his heel and walks towards the door. When he leaves he slams the door so hard the paintings on the walls rattle.

Marlon turns around to look out the window, honing in where Laurent’s still standing talking to Arvid, laughing at something. Sean’s talking but Marlon isn’t listening. The black-haired man on the courtyard is the key to making the slums safe for Anna should she be reborn there. Half a minute goes by then Aiden comes walking from the mansion, waving his hand as he’s approaching. Laurent greets him with a hug and an affectionate temple rub that Aiden returns, smiling. Aiden is right. Laurent will be heavily burdened by this. Once upon a time, Marlon would never have considered pulling a priceless on a friend. But things have changed and Laurent is the one who insisted he owed Marlon for his prolonged life.

Later that night the four of them, Arvid, Laurent, Aiden and Marlon, sit drinking together in a living room while Charles is in Marlon’s room writing. That’s when Marlon brings it up. “Remember when I took you to the doctor and you insisted you owed me for it? I’m going to need to pull a priceless on you. And you have to promise not to tell anyone I put you up to it.”

The mood in the room changes. Arvid keeps silent listening as Marlon makes his request. Laurent points out the same things as Aiden did - that he isn’t cut out for it, that everyone high ranking will resist him, that he might have to kill pack members to get to the top. Marlon makes counterpoints, promises support. Aiden helps to convince Laurent and when Laurent looks to Arvid for his opinion Arvid speaks in favour of Marlon’s suggestion. Marlon does a good job of painting the political pros of why Laurent should do it. Laurent doesn’t even seem to realise he’s being used as a pawn. In the end, he agrees. And later still Aiden expresses his gratitude, taking Laurent to his bed while Laurent falls under the enchantment of his red eyes.

Marlon remains sitting with his cognac long after the others have left the room, long after the candles have burnt out and the vague nighttime light from the windows is the only thing separating one shadow from another. Anna will have to forgive him for missing storytime tonight. Maybe she’s been there to watch him destroy the life of his best friend and knows why he doesn’t come to her room. Maybe she’ll understand. He doubts it.

Arvid comes to find him when the sky is starting to show the first hints of dawn. He sits on the floor between Marlon’s legs, crosses his arms on Marlon’s thighs, rests his chin on his arms and looks up at Marlon.

Marlon reaches out to pet his hair. “You understand what I did to Laurent, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“I love you, Arvid, but you should get as far away from me as possible.”

“You do what’s needed to win. Just like the Commander.”

“You left the Commander,” Marlon states.

Arvid smiles softly. “No. I stayed with the Commander. Then I came to you. There’s a world of difference between leaving somebody and going to somebody. When the day comes and you require my sacrifice, I will go willingly to the flames.”

Marlon sees nothing but earnesty in Arvid’s eyes. Aiden’s said that Ares demands a heavy price from those he grants boons. Marlon thinks that this is what that means. He can’t sacrifice his loved ones without paying the price himself. He knows he can never get back the level of friendship he’s had with Laurent once Laurent takes his place as the Hale Patriarch. Should he ever throw Arvid under the bus he’ll be ripping out another part of his own heart. But it doesn’t matter as long as he can guarantee a future for his kits. He’s forfeited his own life to the struggle. On the inside, all he feels is cold.

He puts a hand under Arvid’s chin and guides him up for a kiss. “Make love to me, Arvid. Please.”

Arvid does. And for a moment, Marlon manages to forget the permafrost inside of him…

* * *


	29. Severing Limbs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon makes a decision that will impact his personal life greatly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm afraid of heights, right? I've had actual nightmares from researching [Marlon and Laurent's personal playgrounds](https://youtu.be/gDN4c2wnx3E). xD

* * *

“So, what do you say, boys? Tuck ourselves in for an early night?” Marlon says with an innocent expression. They're in the living room. Dick's sitting on Luci's lap on the loveseat with Mike beside them, Dean and Raff flanks Marlon on the couch.

“Nice try, Father,” Raff answers dryly. “You’ve just reached the point where I’m feeling truly shaken. You really expect us to saunter off and go to bed?”

Marlon chuckles and shakes his head. “No. But I don’t like to talk about my actions around this time. It cost me dearly. Both in terms of my relationships with my loved ones as well as my own emotional well-being. It's because of my actions around this time that I try to be self-aware not to fall down that rabbit hole again. I clung to the cold part inside of me to be what I needed to be to ensure that we'd have a future. And it's very important for me that you understand that when Aiden took Laurent to his bed that night, he didn't do it because I told him to, but because he wanted Laurent to know he was loved. Aiden was furious with me and my actions that followed only made him angrier."

"I think you're wrong," Dean says. "I'm sat here thinking, what if it was Sam and me. What if it was Sam who was on the verge of losing his scent, who wanted to follow his dead daughter to the other side? Then suddenly he's turning to a cold-hearted bastard and when I ask why he talks about kits he doesn't have yet and what will happen to them in fifteen years. That'd be him telling me he's found something to live for. I'd be playing along with his bullshit too if he gave any sign of hanging on. I―" Dean's phone rings. He holds up a finger and digs his phone up, looks at the caller ID then answers. "Heya, Sammy. Where ya at? … _Key West?_ As in Florida? _Dude._ Yeah, okay. Alright. Have fun. And don’t lose the shortstop. Just hold onto his tail so he doesn’t scamper off. Love you.” Dean hangs up with a bemused chuckle. “Gabe took Sam to fucking Florida. On a whim. Like, who the fuck does that? Who gets off work in the afternoon and goes ‘You wanna go for a drink? Great, I know a good place,’ and jumps on a plane to fly several states away?”

“We all do from time to time,” Raphael says with an amused smile.

“Yes, but Gabe’s the most likely to do it alone. All it takes is for Luci to be a bit pissed at him and he’ll think ‘You know where would be a good place to be right now? Mexico’,” Mike adds with a snigger.

Dean looks at them with a bemused smile. He turns his head to look at Dick. “You too?”

Dick shrugs. “Not quite. I vowed to become rich enough to be able to do things like that but my past has made me a bit too frugal to actually do it. Crowley and I would go on planned vacations and my job has sent me travelling on several occasions. I’ve felt no need to seek further adventure.”

Dean’s scent is doing complicated things. Deep underneath there’s a hinted layer of sadness that seems odd to Luci until he remembers Dean’s behaviour at the doctor when he demanded to get vaccinated. The others don’t appear to notice the underlying sadness.

“Really? You never gotten the urge to jump into a car to find out where all the roads end? Or board a boat to see what’s beyond the horizon?” Dean asks.

Dick smirks. “There are maps for that.” Dean scoffs but Dick doesn’t let him answer. Instead, he turns to Marlon. “You said Laurent wasn’t cut out to be Patriarch, but in the brief time I got to know him it was my impression that he was well liked and well respected within the pack?”

“Indeed. He grew into the role and once he got mated he found happiness despite the geas I’d thrust upon him. But he did struggle. It truly wasn’t the right lifestyle for him.”

“You have barely mentioned dad,” Mike says. 

“I haven’t talked much about my Charles but that’s because he and I were assigned different tasks at the time so we were together mostly at night and in other stolen moments. And at that time, he didn’t yet know how to deal with me. And think about it, son. We’d just gotten mated more or less and then this emotional bomb goes off in me. He barely knew me, he was young, and he had no formal training to deal with grief. But he was there for me. Keeping himself close as much as our tasks allowed, touching me, soothing me. It went a long way to keep me somewhat grounded. But he was smart and sane enough to get out of the room when I went off and started hurling tables because someone said something inconsequential. Arvid instead came into the room and went ‘Okay so we don’t like tables anymore. How about chairs? Are chairs our enemies too? I killed the chair. Do the next one, I’ll hold, you’ll kick.’ That’s the kind of energy Arvid brought to the table and that got through to me when reason didn’t. It would take the steam out of me and instead I’d vent with words. That’s why Aiden thought we had such a healthy relationship even when we both appeared to be insane to an outsider. And your dad and I were about to struggle even harder before we found peace together.”

“I never realised how ill-suited you and dad were for each other,” Raff says with a hint of sadness in his scent. Luci purrs soothingly. 

“No. Don’t go there, son. We were happy together. I will admit this only once, and that is that it probably wouldn’t have worked out in the long run if we both hadn’t had others to smooth over the bumps along the way. We had a very trying time. But we evolved together. Charles and I were never a perfect match sexually. That’s very much a bi-product of the PTSD he acquired in his short captivity. I didn’t mention it because he was taken and freed in only two days and he was well treated while a prisoner. But he was chained up and afraid during his captivity, and anytime sex got too restrictive or rough he’d be triggered. I never held that against him and it wasn’t a chore to adapt. Charles scent was a drug to me. One I couldn’t see any drawbacks to. Once the war was over and I’d passed the acute stages of mourning, his scent let me sleep better than ever before. And my absolute happy place was sitting on our bed doing paperwork or writing while he was sat by the desk writing one of his books. Sex is a distant third or fourth when it comes to close relationships. Intimacy, friendship, trust are all much more important. And we had that. Mostly. The trust part could be rocky at times but only when it came to the issue of our mateship. In all else, we evolved together.”

“I remember that,” Luci says. “Your purrs would be synched. Even Aiden would be synching with you, purring in another room. And when we went into your bedroom when you were like that, I remember how calm and serene it felt."

"I remember that too," Mike says with a soft smile. "We used to play on the floor, trying to be quiet not to pop that bubble of peace."

"Mmh. But your dad and I didn't settle into that until after the civil war was over and I was no longer swept up in the mission of saving our way of life."

"Why wasn't dad considered for Main?" Raff asks.

"Because he wasn't suited for the position. He was too young and inexperienced. While most Packrunners raise their kits to be able to become leaders it still takes years of living as an adult to become good at seeing long-term and caring for a large group of people. Charles and Amara came from a forest pack and were adjusting to city living. And you have to remember that our Main was not only responsible for the pack, but also a key player in the uprising. That, more than anything, was what put our few Omegas off.” Marlon chuckles. “Back then my Charles was still very awkward around people. Nobody would have thought that he’d go on to become a shrewd and masterful politician. So. I asked Laurent to become the Hale Patriarch and thus be the leader of a pack with between 800 and 1000 members...”

* * *

Marlon and Laurent’s sitting high above the city on a partially constructed high rise. The construction of it stopped when the builders got drafted, leaving beamwork and concrete floors but no walls. This is what normally constitutes as Laurent and Marlon’s personal playground to climb and jump around on. There is a special sense of freedom to be perched on a steel beam hundreds of feet above the street, wind ruffling your hair. But today is not about freedom. They dangle their legs over the edge of the concrete floor and Laurent leans his head against a support beam. His lips tremble again as Marlon pockets his first aid kit. He smells of pain but Marlon has patched up the injuries from the latest challenge. “I can’t do it, Mar. I can’t do it. I can’t I can’t I can’t,” Laurent says.

"You can. You're going to do great as a Patriarch. I have no doubt about it whatsoever."

"I've had to kill two good Alphas and maim a third so far. That's two pack members, Mar! They're my family. They wouldn't give up because they knew I'm too young and not enough of a leader. The ones above me know I'm coming and they're only going to be harder to beat. How is it worth it if I have to kill my own family?"

Marlon leans his temple against Laurent's shoulder. "I love you like a brother, Laurent. I know it might seem like I'm making a lie of that by asking this of you. But this is bigger than you and me. If you don't do it, we'll lose the civil war. That'll mean the end of all Packrunning. I took you to the doctor because I wanted to give you a future. But if you don't do this, none of us will have one. They're already arresting Packrunners en masse for the crime of being Packrunners. They're taking our kits and placing them with Conservative families or worse, in Conservative orphanages. They're confiscating our property and freezing our accounts. It's just the beginning. They've started with the smaller, easier packs. They're going to move up to our packs soon. I know it might seem like they can't get to you because you're many, but even if they don't, consider what will happen. Where will your Os wander? Where are you going to find mates?"

"But why _me_?"

‘Because I can control you’ wouldn’t go over well. "Because of your diplomatic skills. You have the first rule baked into every cell of your body. You've made so many friends out-pack. You see how they fit in with you and your pack so you gain their trust and empathy. That's the kind of people we need at the top."

Laurent turns his head to regard Marlon. His eyes are so sad and uncertain it makes something inside Marlon hurt. Laurent leans his head back against the beam. "Friends… that's proving to be an issue for me. My friends in the pack…"

"They don't support you?" Marlon asks in surprise.

"No, they do. They asked me if I'm sure about what I'm doing and when I said yes they started treating me as if I was already Patriarch."

“But that’s good, right?”

Laurent shakes his head. “No. They were below me in rank even before I started my climb and now they no longer act like, like, _friends_. They act like subordinates. I can’t talk with them. They look at me as if I have the answer to everything since I’m putting on an act of being so sure of myself and what I’m doing. And I _have to_ act like that or the pack won’t follow me. But I don’t have anyone in the pack to vent to or express my doubts and fears. The Alphas I’m set to challenge will with no uncertainty make every fight a deathmatch if I show any sign of doubting myself. The only people I have are out-pack. You, Aiden, Sean, Arvid… But you can’t be there all of the time. And I feel so damned lonely. From one day to another I’ve got no one in-pack to be myself with. And I think about it and realise this is just the beginning. This is how my life’s going to be from now on.” His lips quiver and he lies down to look at the concrete above. “And I think of Clara. She was so young but her personality? She was like you. Full of confidence and guts. When I started courting her the top dogs took notice. Our Main spent a lot of time with her, fully acknowledging that Clara might take over after her one day and seeing that as a good thing. And Clara was so happy when I told her I wanted to wait to get your blessing. Like that was the best thing I could have said. And I can’t stop thinking about it. If I hadn’t waited…”

“She might have died giving birth instead,” Marlon fills in.

Laurent sits up and looks out over the city. “She wasn’t a climber like you and I. But she loved the heights.” He points at a high building in the outskirts of Hale territory. “See that? I showed her how to climb up using the drainpipe, climbed one handed holding an arm around her midriff so she wouldn’t fall. We made love on the roof. No. We fucked like dogs, _then_ we made love. She was so much like you, but less broody and moody. To her, anything was possible. And with her… I love sex but with her it was different. Any other time I’ve got hooked on an O they’ve been spoken for. So I hadn’t understood until I was with her.”

“Mmh. I didn’t really see the point of sex until I met Arvid after I’d presented. Don’t get me wrong, it was really nice with Keith. But it wasn’t the same.”

Laurent turns his head to look at Marlon. “What’s Arvid like in bed?”

“You never slept with him?”

Laurent shakes his head and looks away. “You’ve never officially green-lit it and if I’d pursued him it I would have risked souring two friendships. Besides, why would he go for guys like me when he can have guys like you?”

Marlon’s left staring at his friend for a long time, heart beating rapidly. This here is what Aiden meant by ‘your other boy’. Laurent _likes_ Arvid in a way Marlon’s been too blind to see before. What was it Laurent said? Any other O was spoken for? If he’d pursue Arvid he’d risk souring the friendship between them? “You’ve seen him have sex at the Sanctuary. You know what he’s like.”

Laurent huffs and gives him a dry look, showing some humour for the first time since they went up here. “I’ve seen you have sex at the Sanctuary and it’s nothing like you are in bed. It’s the difference between a hobbled horse harnessed to pull a cart compared to a wild stallion bucking in joy.”

Marlon bites his lip with a churning in his gut. “Arvid is everything I’ve ever wanted in a lover."

Laurent nods sadly. "You make a perfect couple," he says and gives Marlon a small smile. His eyes look too darn defeated.

Marlon smirks and shifts, looking away to hide his annoyance and discomfort. Luckily his feelings don't translate to his scent. "What about Charles?"

"I don't know him. He's pretty reclusive. The only thing I know about him is that he is polite."

"Fair." Marlon looks back at Laurent then reaches out to cup his cheek, pulling him in for a tender kiss. "You trust me, right?"

"I do."

"Then keep climbing to the top and I'll make sure you get the support you need. Just hold on."

* * *

Arvid arches his back as Marlon nails the sweet spot inside of him. His keening purr gives Marlon chills. By the time Arvid comes, claws digging into Marlon's ass and fangs into his shoulder Marlon follows him over, both of them are pumping air. Arvid chuckles when Marlon collapses onto his chest. "I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm loving your sudden enthusiasm. But I have to ask… what's wrong? You've been neglecting your duties all day to fuck me like your life depended on it. As much as I'd wish it was because you've gotten past your grief and feeling a lust for life again we both know that's not true. So what is it? You know I'm not going anywhere." Arvid sniffs the air, reading Marlon’s feelings. "Whelp. That's sadness. So I'm going somewhere. What's my mission?"

Despite himself, Marlon chuckles. "I wish you were a little less perceptive right now."

Arvid smirks lazily, sweat darkening his blond hair plastering it to his forehead. "You think I'm going to get killed, huh?"

Marlon sighs and lifts his head. "You know, I had plans for us?"

"Past tense. Lovely," Arvid jokes and trails his claws along Marlon's back. His eyes are serious, though, and he gets a hint of anxiety in his scent.

"I'm so cold on the inside. I wanted to wait until the war was over and I'd started to thaw. Then I was going to court you for a mateship, make you part of the pack and nudge you into being our Main."

"But not anymore. It's not something I did, is it?"

"No. But I'm not going to ask you to be my mate. I don't want to know the answer."

"You know the answer already, Peepers. I bet you knew the answer long before I was clued in."

Marlon caresses Arvid's cheek, aching on the inside. "You understand why I asked what I did of Laurent?"

"The Commander said Packrunning would be extinct here in five to ten years if nobody fought back fast. We've been trying to get messages to the packs at the front but Conservatives check any letters and listen in on phone calls so the only way is by using couriers. Couriers the Hales could provide. Without them, we'll lose."

"Exactly. You care about Laurent a lot, don't you?"

Arvid nods with a lazy smile. "I do. You're not jealous, are you?"

Before yesterday the answer would have been no. Marlon doesn’t answer, instead he asks, "You love him?"

Arvid purses his lips for a beat before answering. "Yes. Every time in the past when you left I stuck around at the Sanctuary until it was time to go back and we became good friends. I think, if I'm going to get introspective, that once I started caring again, and that was a gradual process that started while crawling through those cursed tunnels with you, I started to think of him as part of the reason to care. I like an underdog that beats the odds. Which he is. Medicine or not, EB50 went through his close family like a plague. He had a big family and his closest surviving relative is his cousin Malicia. Depression has killed people for less but Laurent is tenacious and good-natured with a fierce will to live. And I admire that." Arvid suddenly laughs. "I can smell when you get jealous, you know?"

"Hey, I'm not saying anything but I can't control how I feel and I feel like clinging to you growling at the world that you're mine," Marlon grumps.

"I am, no doubt. I've developed a thing for big, ruthless Alphas that change the world. Oh, there we go again with the sadness. So. Let's rip the band-aid. How have you chosen for me to die?" Arvid says jokingly.

Marlon shakes his head. "I need you to live."

"So what's my mission?"

"Do you love Laurent enough to mate him?"

Arvid's chipper smile slowly melts off his face. "You're not going to ask me to mate you because you want me to mate out-pack. And everyone knows that mating in two packs brings trouble. It's doable, but brings a lot of complications. I get it,” he muses thoughtfully. He purses his lips in thought for a beat. “Is that really what you want?"

"I don't want that at all. But that's what I need. I _want_ you all to myself. But I need you by Laurent's side. I hadn't counted on his in-pack friends suddenly treating him as a superior thus leaving him without emotional support. He's cracking because he's had to kill pack members he's challenged and apparently that's a big deal to him."

Arvid sniggers. "You know how telling that last sentence is of your personality?"

Marlon scowls. "Nobody goes into a challenge with the intent to kill. It's either accidental or the loser chooses to die rather than submit. It's darn sad when it happens but it's still a choice."

"I'm not critiquing you, Peepers. But to the vast majority it's too high of a price so few people gamble with their lives. I don't think you would even think it worth placing a bet unless you go all in. That's why I follow you. You dare go where others don't and you don't shirk the price you have to pay. That's what makes you a son of Ares and not Athena."

"But will you do it?" Marlon insists.

Arvid smirks but pointedly doesn’t answer. "Do you require me to become the Main too?"

Marlon hadn't even thought that far and mentally smacks himself. "Yes."

"You realize that once I'm mated to someone else and have a pack bond, my allegiance will shift. At least in part. I can't see myself ever not being your friend, and I listen to you. But once I have stronger bonds at work on me I will no longer obey unquestionably. It’s the reason the Commander would allow no bonds stronger than friendship bonds. Once a pack- or mating bond is in place any loyalty outside of those bonds is compromised."

Marlon knows that better than anyone. He’s lucky it’s impossible for Alphas to form mating bonds or Finn might have had him securely fettered. "I need your support to be a 100% during the war. Phillip said I would do something that would make people call me insane but if I don't do it we will all die."

Arvid sniggers. "You say that as if that’s something new but you always do the insane thing. But sure. Without a future there's no point. How about after the war? What do you want from the Hales?"

Marlon has to stop and think. His face twists into something dark. "Hang any Snatcher that dares work on the territory, by their fucking entrails where anyone can see. No bribe should be high enough to look away. No kit no matter their designation should have to fear abduction and slavery."

Arvid laughs. "You sure know how to hold a grudge. But I can get behind that. How about muggings? Threats? Theft? Displacement of homeless kits who move in without our permission?"

Marlon frowns. "We're still talking about kits?"

"Oh, definitely. You're asking me to take over a large criminal pack. A Wolf's gotta eat. The kits in the pack will be trained to live the thug life and it's natural for them to target other kits while they learn. You know the drill. You worked with Laurent. He's told me that he'd, I quote, set you loose on people when needed. You were just a Juvie."

"Okay, fine, so here's the basics. No arms dealing. No perfume. No chemical weapons of any kind. No slavery."

"I challenge that. I say we get a monopoly on the perfume business conducted on the territory and are allowed to eliminate competition. Same goes for chem. There's a lot of money to be made selling scent blockers."

"No guns. If people had guns, especially in the slums, the murder rate would go way up. I―" For a moment Marlon gets swept up in negotiating the business side of the Hale pack, setting up a future dynamics that will limit the Hales' power in the city, and make it absolute in their area. They discuss laws that the Hales will be responsible to uphold since the police won't, laws they're free to break and so on. Until suddenly Marlon remembers _why_ they are doing it. "Or we could merge the packs and I wouldn't have to let you go."

Arvid smiles softly. "No, we couldn't and you know it. First of all there are Hales that aren't suited to be Williamses. Second, every pack has a function to fill. If the Hales joined you, you wouldn't take over their business and living, you'd reform them to move up to your perch. As soon as that happened another pack would take their place in the slums. A pack you might not have a good relationship with, who aren't willing to uphold a deal like this."

"I know. I _know_. I just…" He’s having second thoughts. He’s had them all day which is why he’s been desperate to be with Arvid one last time. And another last time. And a third and so forth.

"I've helped leading one band of murderers, I can lead another. But you have to be sure. Once I’m bonded there are no takebacks."

"I'm not going to force you to mate him.” Forced bonding would require isolation and time. Time is a commodity they don’t have a lot of so technically he can’t force a bond. “But he needs it."

Arvid closes his eyes, fingers drawing circles in the sweat on Marlon’s back. "I'd pictured myself dying in your service… Sometimes… Sometimes I’ve had daydreams of lunacy where we’d get mated and I’d have your kit. Madness, since kits hate me and I’m useless with them. ...But in my mind, when I decided to come to you, it was because I realised I wanted to die by your side. I wanted to die for you because I realised you meant something to me personally.” He’s quiet for a while. “It took a long time for me to see it. At first it was just a wish to see you again. I put it down to curiosity and neglected to see that it was the first time I felt that type of curiosity since my pack died. But I found myself thinking of that stubborn little reckless brat with the eyes of a god, wondering what became of him. After the second time we met I started making vague plans, hoping there would come an opportunity to visit New York. I remember the third time. I was happy then, locked on your knot in your college room. I was happy in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. I was still too dense to get that I wanted to stay with you until after I got back to the company and kept longing to go back. In Canada I knew I wanted to stay, but I couldn’t stay without clearing it with the Commander first. After all, he saved my life first, and I owed him the courtesy of not abandoning him. But I longed for home. And home was you. And you live to die so I expected to follow you to an early grave.” He falls quiet. Marlon doesn’t say anything, just listens to him breathing until he speaks again. “I hadn't expected for you to choose a good life with a lovely mate for me. I'm not saying no I just have to adjust my mind to a future where I'm still alive. The only drawback I see except leaving your side, is that Laurent is sterile. And I'm not that old. Hell, I'm in my prime for having kits and this offer asks me to settle down to live a long life. I need a few minutes to come to terms with that."

"A few minutes," Marlon says in dry amusement and aches inside.

"I've never needed more than that," Arvid lies with a cheeky smirk. It’s a lie and Marlon knows it because for the rest of the day he’s not the only one making love like his life depended on it.

* * *

Marlon invites Laurent over. He stands watching from a window when Arvid greets Laurent in the courtyard. He watches Arvid kiss Laurent, sees Laurent melt and get the dumbest, lovestruck expression on his face. He wonders how he'd been to blind to see it. To see that Laurent had lost his heart to Arvid alongside of him. Simple. When Arvid was around Marlon had seen nothing but him. And Laurent respects Marlon’s possessive nature too much to compete with him.

Marlon hadn't anticipated that Aiden would be mad at him for letting Laurent have Arvid. But he is. "I don't care if it's the right thing to do! When push comes to shove Laurent is out-pack. You _need_ Arvid." 

Marlon shakes his head. "I don't need anybody. I can go on with this fight fuelled by hatred alone. Laurent can't."

Aiden doesn't agree. They have yet another fight that ends with Aiden walking away slamming the door.

Charles' rage comes as an even bigger surprise. Charles doesn't like that Marlon sent Arvid away. When he envisioned a future he'd pictured a time when Marlon is no longer depressed and the three of them are in a happy mateship, raising kits together. It's yet another person's relationship to Arvid he'd been blind to. He knew Charles liked Arvid but not how important Arvid had become to him in this new life Marlon brought him to.

The only one who is happy to see Arvid go is Amara. Not because she doesn't like him (as far as Marlon knows), but because Charles is mad enough to give Marlon the silent treatment after the initial fight. 

None of that matters as long as they win the war.

After that, it happens fast. Arvid strolls into the core of the Hale territory. When he’s stopped from entering he tells them he’s there to challenge the Main. It’s unusual for an out-pack individual to challenge pack leaders for the position but it happens, especially in the Hale type of packs. And Arvid has gained a lot of respect from several high ranking Hales when he led the hunt for the assassins so he’s swiftly taken inside to the Main. Laurent tells Marlon later that the fight was mostly symbolic posturing. The real ‘fight’ happens in words between the clashes. Marlon never gets to know what Arvid said in that debate, but the next time they meet Arvid’s firmly pack bonded. Not long thereafter a mating bond begins to form. It takes a bit longer for Laurent to reach the top but once Arvid’s Main the resistance lessens and Laurent’s emotional state stabilises. Runners are sent to Canada to bring the packs home. They're sent inland to unite packs already at home. 

When Packrunners start deserting en masse things start getting ugly for real. Karen and another general are arrested before they've brought their troops home. Many other soldiers are killed or apprehended. Honestly, Marlon isn't quite certain of all that goes on. Too many reports come in from all over the country and it’s nightmarish. 

Marlon finds the publisher that once wrote factually about the pack war in the slums and convinces him to come live with them to document the truth. He tells him, “I'll never force you to write lies even if our actions put us in a bad light. But I have not read a true word about us since the drafting and we need someone to counter the propaganda. All I'm asking for you to be allowed to sit in the room where it happens is that you don't publish anything that will give the government a heads up before we make our moves. Like a nature photographer who lets the orphaned lion cub starve in order to document the truth.” The man agrees. After the first article is published the government issues a warrant for his arrest and burns his printer to the ground. If it's something the Conservative journalist hates more than Packrunning trash it's censorship. He has a network of journalists with the same values as him and the Williams fund their underground publications. It’s fraught with danger to publish, distribute or read underground magazines. Journalists and readers are jailed, their kits and property seized, printers destroyed. Pirate radio becomes a thing. The fight for a free press, for free speech, is a battle on its own that deserves its own story. Marlon isn’t much involved apart from the funding and making sure there are journalists present behind closed doors. In a way, their struggle is the least affected by internal designationism. Conservatives, Primals, Progs all come together in the fight against censorship with much less difficulty than any other part of the civil war.

It becomes apparent how outnumbered Packrunners are. They’ve got more military compared to their numbers but the Conservatives are in the majority and years of sneaky manipulation has put the Conservatives in a privileged position as a designation as well as prepared the common people with propaganda to mistrust Packrunners. Packrunners are bereft their human rights. “Nobody in their right mind would argue that humans should have certain rights, so what they do is instead make who should count as human the debated topic,” someone muses in a meeting. It’s a valid point to make when pelting suddenly means shoot at sight. Conservatives don’t do it in public. There are accounts of lynchings starting to happen. Many of the dead bodies found are of pelted individuals.

That Packrunners have more soldiers amongst them is of little help since America is so big and the situation looks different everywhere. It’s like trying to unite 50 different countries. When the suggestion comes up to run all Conservatives off any pack territories country-wide the representatives of a triad of packs in Kansas stand up to put their foot down. Kate, Samuel, and Henry had seen their three packs decimated protecting their town from the Union. “Our townsfolk have stood up for us when government officials came to arrest us and claim our land. I’m not unhousing a person solely based on the god they follow,” Kate says.

“Agreed. ‘Saving people’ is part of our pack motto. Our town survived the Union war when surrounding villages perished. We will not suddenly turn enemies to the people we’ve fought to protect just because you or the government say so,” Henry agrees.

Other packs have different experiences. Down in Arkansas where there are several ultra Conservative strongholds packs are being apprehended and separated, put to live in house arrest in Conservative households to be indoctrinated. Their lands aren’t seized to the same extent. Their names remain on ownership deeds but they’re not allowed to keep living there.

There are military clashes much the same as it had been with the Union. More and more as the Conservatives manages to pull their forces back from the Canadian front.

Jed agrees with the Kansas triad. They can’t as a blanket statement judge all Conservatives as bad and treat them the same. There are Conservatives that put up resistance, help Packrunners in general or because they’re friends with a pack.

At no time is that as apparent as when a company is sent to arrest or kill the Williams pack. The officer that leads them approaches the gate on top of a white horse, putting himself in danger. He’s dressed in the red parade uniform with two medals on his chest, painting an even bigger target of himself. His face is grim and eyes hard and flared. The air is tense as they all wait for the first bullet to be fired but his soldiers are not in battle ready positions. The four platoon leaders are mounted on horses riding beside their men, each carrying the American flag on a standard. Most seem nervous but the commander is angry. “I demand to speak with Aiden Williams,” he says.

Jed comes to stand inside of the gates, bars the only thing that separates them, as much of a target as the company commander. “I’m Jedikiah Williams, the Patriarch of the pack. What is your business with us?”

“I know who you are. But I want to speak with Aiden, not you,” the commander says with a hard edge to his voice.

After some quick debate amongst the Williamses Aiden’s sent out through the gates, Marlon flanking him armed and ready to shoot at the first sign of trouble. He’s recognised the commander. Last time Marlon saw him he’d outranked the man’s military status. Not anymore. Major Carter Wadsworth is still the most beautiful man Marlon’s ever seen. More so now when he looks like a determined storm brewing. Marlon keeps his rifle aimed at Carter, finger hovering over the trigger. 

Carter gives him a disdainful look and jumps off his horse. He strides towards Aiden and stops when Marlon growls a threat, thinking he’s much too close. Carter gestures with a paper. “See this bullshit, Aiden? These are my orders.” He holds it out and Marlon growls fiercer when Aiden closes the distance to take it. Carter crosses his arms over his chest, ignoring Marlon and anyone else except Aiden. “For over a year I’ve been fighting alongside good men and women, caring for them, seeing them dying, saving them and being saved by them. I’ve made sure that anyone under me knows we’re all Americans. We’ve fought for America under the parol ‘Land of the Free’. We’ve become brothers and sisters baptised in blood, sweat and tears.” If Marlon hadn’t been undercover he wouldn’t have known what baptised meant. But some of the Conservatives would dip their kitlings into water to wash them free of ‘bonds beyond the veil’ to promise their souls to the Light. It’s a ridiculous practise since you can’t give away someone’s soul. Only the individual themselves could do that. 

Carter continues while Aiden reads. “I’ve seen soldiers of all designations perform incredible stunts for each other, going beyond what duty requires. We’ve burned in hell together. We heard the rumours of packs deserting but at first it was only a few packs of criminals. But then suddenly other Packrunners desert. Reputable packs known for their dedication and valor. Packs like yours. Then General Hartley is arrested for treason in the middle of a briefing. The accusations against her are pure bullshit and I know that because it doesn’t add up with the timeline. Men under my command were apprehended and taken away for questioning. Packrunners and Progs. All with other bullshit accusations directed their way. I’ve had to pin stars onto all my soldiers, I’ve had to lie for them, to say that they’re present during morning prayers. Then the mass desertion happened. Good, obedient soldiers leaving mid-battle. When I questioned them they said their Mains had called them home to face a bigger threat than the Union. Then this happens.” He gestures angrily at the paper in Aiden’s hand.

Aiden holds it out the paper behind him so Marlon can take a look. Marlon edges closer carefully, snatches the paper to scuttle back to a safer distance without removing his aim from Carter. He reads in quick glances, keeping his main focus on Carter. It’s an order for their arrest. Carter isn’t to interrogate them, just apprehend them and bring them in. If he can’t, he’s supposed to kill them. According to the paper he has a full battalion to do the job but here with him there’s only a company.

“We’ve been told the Packrunners are trying to seize power over the country. That you have committed horrible crimes against innocent people. But that doesn’t explain why Progs are targeted by our arrests. And when we got back to America the whole fucking country is on fire like it wasn’t when we had the Union here. We are burning books, for Light’s sake! Dangerous literature they say. Yet I scraped a kits’ book out of the flames and it was about a little kit who was nervous about starting school, and how her pack supported her and taught her how kits of other designations are just like her. It’s a book that speaks of peace and tolerance and it wasn’t being burned by mistake." Carter turns his head and yells at his troops. "What are we!?"

As one, the hundred men and women answer, " ** _Americans!_** "

"What do we fight for!?"

" ** _Freedom!_** "

Carter looks back at Aiden, angry scowl firmly in place. "You heard them. Now, one of my men have vouched for you and your brother being good people. Personally, I don't trust your brother James worth shit. He's far too good of a liar."

"His name is Marlon," Aiden corrects.

"Which is my point," Carter counters and spares another disdainful look at Marlon. "But I've got orders telling me to kill Americans. To do to my brothers and sisters what I've spent a year fighting _against_. And an asshole once told me that friendly fire isn't. So I want you to tell me what the fuck is going on because I'm no fucking sheep who follow blindly. If I'm going to turn on my fellow Americans it has to be for a good fucking reason and my superiors are feeding me shit. If they were telling me the truth there wouldn't fucking be a Conservative O pointing a gun at me from inside of your gates." Carter points at Naomi who stands with her handgun trained on him as determinately as Marlon. She'd asked to be armed and Fredrick had taught her how to shoot at the shooting range at the far end of their property. "So talk."

"Short version. They drafted us to get us out of the way. While we were away they outlawed Packrunning, seized our property and stole our kits. Or, in our case, murdered our kits and Os trying to pin the blame on another pack. You want the long version you'll have to come inside for a sit down."

"I want to bring my officers with me and I want a promise out of you that no one under my command will be harmed in my absence."

"I can promise we won't do anything unless we're forced to act in self-defense. As long as you keep it peaceful you’ll be safe under ceasefire negotiations.”

“Then so be it.” Carter lifts his hand and the four officers come riding up to him. Marlon lowers his weapon when he recognises Keith amongst them. All four of them are wearing the star on their uniform collar. Carter gives a few orders, the officers gallop back to relay them, then come back and dismount. “For transparency's sake, Conservative, Conservative, Primal, Progressive,” Carter says and points at the officers in turn. “Formal introductions can be made inside. Now, I’m ready to listen to your side of this bullshit. Lead the way.”

And listen, he does. He’s so angry Marlon sneezes when he comes too close to him. Grim-faced, Carter listens first to Aiden, then to Jed, then to Naomi, then to Chuck, then to the Conservative journalist. He rarely interrupts unless he’s asking questions of clarification. He looks at maps and documents, wheels ticking in his head. They’re not telling him what they’re planning, only things that have already happened. Marlon doesn’t trust him one bit and it’s clear that the feeling is mutual. But he trusts Keith who is sitting beside Carter. Marlon had loathed that Aiden took the beautiful Conservative to his bed. Now it might mean they can gain an important ally or it might mean they’ll be betrayed because Aiden’s a knothead who can’t keep it in his pants. They break for lunch and then for dinner. Both meals the soldiers spend outside of the estate because Carter wants to be with his men. And they _are_ his men. It’s in the way they look at him and smell around him. There is absolute trust there. That’s furthered proved by the Packrunners who haven’t deserted but opted to stay with him.

When the sun is setting Jed offers to house Carter and the four officers, as well as stabling and caring for their horses. Carter accepts and declares his officers off-duty. As soon as he does Keith gets up from his seat to come around the table, more or less throwing himself on Marlon in a crushing hug. The atmosphere turns more relaxed but Carter still reeks of rage. It’s the first time Marlon’s come across someone in the same state of perpetual fury as himself, Jed notwithstanding since he knows how to mask his feelings.

Marlon withdraws to catch up with Keith. He finds out that the rest of the battalion is in New York since the Hales wouldn’t let them cross the bridge at full force. But the standoff is under the same peaceful form as here. They’ve been listening to pirate radio on their way here, talked to Progs, Conservatives, Primals and Packrunners. They’ve passed burned-out buildings, seen dead people hang from trees, tied hands and feet, with the ‘P’ on their shirt. They’ve passed towns where the townspeople had come out with pitchforks to glare at them in protection of their packs, met Conservatives fleeing packs who’ve chased them off their territory with no regards for ownership claims on papers, seen packs form protective rings around Progressive compounds, the list goes on. In small mix-designations towns where everyone knows everyone the unity is generally better, and mid- to big cities are generally segregated. A literate middle class in cities seemed to ensure stories of the Packrunning malevolence spread while the government was praised for its harsh crackdown. The country is on fire and nobody seems to know who’s to blame. Keith has told Carter everything Marlon had told him he’d learned from his time undercover. So Carter isn’t as unaware as he was pretending. But Keith says they’d all known General Hartley was arrested on false grounds. What they didn’t know was if the government was acting on false information or not. Carter had told his troops that the country is in a state of civil war. The very freedom they’ve been fighting for is threatened. ‘But let’s not jump to conclusions. We’re going to find out what factions are at war, and which of those fight for freedom for all Americans before we choose sides.’ By the time they’d come to New York they hadn’t even been surprised to find that the Hales who’d allegedly killed the Williams kits and Os, were allies to the Williams. 

Carter declares they’ll join the Packrunning side of the civil war the day after. He has a ton of stipulations, since he and his soldiers aren’t fighting for Packrunning, but for the freedom and justice for all Americans. He has charisma and looks that win the hearts and loyalty of the troops he leads, as well as the genuine care for them no matter their designations or gender. Marlon still doesn’t trust him. He trusts him less because he keeps ending up in Aiden’s bed. It leads to another fight with Aiden. “You told me to have sex with Laurent to secure his loyalty. Now I’m doing the same with Carter and you’re blowing a fuse? Get the heck over yourself!” Aiden shouts.

“How do you know it’s not the other way around? This could be a ploy to stab us in the back when we least expect it!” Marlon shouts back.

“It isn’t! You don’t know the guy! And admit it, Mar. This comes down to Coombs again. You’re still jealous of what they had even now. Coombs is ultimately responsible for Anna’s death and part of you is _still_ pining for him!”

Something snaps in Marlon’s brain and he sees red. But this time Aiden’s ready for it. Like most fights, it’s brief. It ends with both of them bleeding but Marlon on the floor, pinned down with Aiden growling in his face until the red haze starts to dissipate into a feeling of utter defeat. He doesn’t even have to lick his lips, Aiden smells the shift in his emotions and gets up. “Get a grip on yourself, Mar. Get a darn grip.” With that he turns on his heel and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.

Marlon remains lying on the floor for a long time, tears coming unbidden. He’d said he didn’t need anyone. If he hadn’t made Laurent become Patriarch, his best friend could have been here. His presence glue to the pack alliance. If he hadn’t sent Arvid away… No. No point thinking about it. He doesn’t need anyone. Period.

* * *


	30. Carter Wadsworth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon's not coping well and he frequently clashes with Carter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Ableist language!

* * *

It feels like he's constantly fighting with Charles. His cold-hearted 'I get my way, get out of my way'-attitude wears on Charles, and Amara takes any opportunity to trash talk him behind his back. Charles is sad and he can smell it but when he tries for emotional intimacy there's a vast gap to bridge and Charles only has to say one word wrong for Marlon to lose his temper. Since Charles' go-to response to personal conflict is to withdraw and not to let anyone touch him, their relationship deteriorates fast. Marlon avoids his mate as much as possible to not make it worse. Keith's appearance isn't helping.

When Marlon crawls into bed with Charles he wants to be as close as possible no matter what they've fought about. He scoots himself close to hold Charles. But when he touches Charles Charles raises his head to growl at him.

Marlon is instantly ticked off. He rolls out of bed with a snarl then stomps out of the room. What's the point of having a mate if you can't be close to them. He turns a corner and runs smack into Keith. Keith flusters, "Crap. Sorry, Mar, I was lost in thought and didn't smell y―" 

Marlon silences him by grabbing his face and pulling him in for a kiss. It's brief and has Keith blinking in surprise. "Oh. I. I thought. Now that you're mated―"

"Yes or no?" Marlon demands.

Keith nods empathically. "Yes."

Marlon kisses him again, using his tongue like Keith likes it. Keith grabs a hold of him to pull him close. It escalates from there. Marlon does everything he can to please Keith, fucking like a Prog. He's giving to Keith everything Charles won't let him give, nevermind if he likes it himself or not.

When they're on an armchair in one of the sitting rooms Keith riding him while kissing him, Charles is suddenly there in the door opening, staring in shock smelling sad and angry. It suits him right. Marlon has needs and if Charles refuses to see to them someone else will. All he needed was to lie close with his nose against Charles' skin. It's not an unreasonable wish. 

Charles backs away and disappears.

Marlon had foreseen a fight about it but Charles doesn't mention it.

Then Marlon comes into his bedroom one evening to find Charles straddling another Alpha sitting on the bed. The Alpha sits with his legs on the floor, leaned back supporting himself on his hands behind him. Both of them are dressed and the Alpha isn't touching Charles even if he smells aroused. Charles is the one pawing at the Alpha's chest, purring something seductive while the Alpha chuckling shakes his head with an amused smirk.

Marlon's pulse starts beating hard and loud in his head. "Major Wadsworth. This is my room. It's off-limits to guests," he says coldly.

Carter leans to the side so he can meet Marlon's gaze. "I was invited. Besides, aren't you Packrunners supposed to be the sharing kind?"

Carter says something else but Marlon can't hear anything but his own pulse rushing in his ears. Every fiber in his body is screaming for blood. _Any_ blood. Since he's sober there's at least one working brain cell to tell him he's ready to murder and if he gives into his violent impulse he won't be able to rationalize between Carter and Charles.

" _Fine_. You can keep it. Keep him too for all I care. I don't give a shit." He leaves before he can hurt anyone and goes to find an empty room that he marks up incessantly. He locks the door, turns off the lights and goes to sit on the floor by the wall beside the bed, hugging his knees to his chest.

Charles invited a Conservative Alpha into _his_ bedroom. Charles can burn in hell for all he cares. The mating bond can't fade soon enough. He starts making a pitiful clucking sound and he can't stop. Everything inside of him hurts.

He doesn't return to ‘The Room’ again aside from once to get his belongings. Charles can have the room but he'll be damned if he lets him have Clara's gifts.

He's in a weird headspace. He's getting less confused but his anger issues are off the charts. He's starting to fear falling asleep because of the nightmares. Sometimes it feels like he's living in a bubble of glass, unable to feel at all or connect with the world outside. Other times the tears come and he feels everything at once. He's running out of stories to read to Anna. The time for her rebirth is coming up too fast. He tries to write more but all he can come up with is too darn dark or gory for a kit. He writes the stories anyway since writing puts him in a creative trance that stops him from falling asleep.

The war goes on with more meetings, raids, counterstrikes, political maneuvering. It feels like they're fighting a hydra sprouting new heads for each they chop off. Marlon's only in the fringes of what goes on. He sits in on most meetings but he's too distracted, too tired, or too irrationally angry to give much input. They lose more people. Their pack is down to 19 people with only three Omegas. Every time they have to burn someone he feels hollow. 

Carter often stays in their estate even if he's away a lot of the time. Marlon has very little grasp of who is on the property these days. He keeps the door of his new room locked at all times. He hasn't even put bedding on the bed. It's just a bare mattress. He hasn't cleaned the room and it smells like dust. But it's his and nobody else may cross the threshold.

He gets temporary blessings when he runs into the occasional cat that still calls this their home. One day he goes down to the stables to find Carter's horse munching on hay inside. She's a gorgeous beast, muscular, white, and blue-eyed, with an assortment of scars. Marlon especially takes note of a long scar down her flank. She's calm as a cucumber until he opens the door to the stall to go inside. Then she flattens her ears, turns her back and kicks out.

Unlike with human hostility, it doesn't make him angry. Instead, he turns calm and focused, working on the task of calming her and get her to allow him near. 30 minutes later he's brushing her down when he smells Carter coming. 

"What are you doing to my horse?" Carter asks suspiciously.

Marlon gives him a dry look over the horse's back. "If you can't figure that out you're not fit to have a horse, Major."

Carter's lips pinch in annoyance but he remains quiet outside of the stall.

"What happened to her?" Marlon says after a while, ducking under her neck to brush the other side while touching the long scar briefly.

"Bayonette."

"Such a brave girl you are. Thank you for your service, sweetheart," Marlon coos and rubs her head in a way he's noted she likes.

"I don't like you touching my horse."

Marlon's ticked off. He turns to glare, flaring. "And I don't like you taking my room, my mate and my brother. But lo and behold!" He says with a sweeping gesture. The horse throws her head up with ears slicked back and kicks with her front leg. Marlon dances to the side to avoid the kick, instantly calming down. "I know, sweetheart. You said that already," he says patiently and pushes with one hand pressed to her shoulder. "Relax. I'm not going to hurt your friend." He pets her when she lowers her head and flips her ears forward again. "Look, if you're afraid that I'll harm your mount you can relax. She's a magnificent horse and I would never hurt an animal no matter who owns them. But I don't care if you like me touching her or not. Hers is the only opinion on the matter that is important," he says still turned towards the horse but addressing Carter instead. He turns to face Carter. "Why are you here, Major Wadsworth? Are you leaving? I'd be happy to saddle her up for you."

Carter holds up a bunch of carrots.

Marlon allows his disappointment to show before he turns back to the horse. "Your friend brought you carrots, sweetheart. He’s a nice boy to you, huh?” He resumes brushing her when she steps forward to stick her head out of the stall. He hears Carter chirp affectionately followed by the sound and smell of carrots crunching. He ignores Carter in favour of brushing, hoping Carter will go away.

No such luck. “I was discussing our experiences of the Union war in Canada with your mate when he invited me into his room. He sat on the desk chair and the other chairs had too much stuff lying on them to sit down on. It seemed rude to remove things and put them on the floor so I sat on the bed. That’s when he came over and straddled me. I assure you, I had no romantic or sexual designs on your mate.”

“This concerns me, why?” Marlon answers curtly.

“I don’t like being used as a device in a lover’s spat.”

Marlon stops brushing to close his eyes and lean his forehead against the horse’s warm back. “Isn’t that an issue you should bring up with Charles then, Major? As I recall I wasn’t the one who did it.”

“I have reason to believe you used one of my men in the same capacity.”

Marlon withholds a growl. He pats the horse in goodbye and turns to leave the stall. He puts the brush in the basket on the wall beside the stall and turns to face Carter. “If you’re talking about my rendezvous with Keith then we might need to have a debate about the definition of _using_. My daughter was horribly murdered while cheeping for her life and I was off in another country. I wasn’t there when she needed me. This weighs on me and in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not in the greatest of headspace. So when my mate won’t let me touch him in the literal definition, my other loved ones are otherwise engaged, and I run into one of my closest friends who also happen to be my first ever lover, I take the opportunity to seek physical intimacy with him, it _could_ be construed as using him. But _not_ for the purpose of making my mate jealous. Personally, I don’t see it as ‘using’ to seek out closeness and reassurance from someone you trust and care deeply about. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere else I need to be. Major.” He gives Carter a quick salute and makes himself scarce as quickly as possible. He can feel his mood swinging wildly and doesn’t want to be near Carter when it settles no matter what it settles on.

* * *

“Hey, Aiden, could― Damn it!” Marlon steps into Aiden’s room and stops mid-sentence when he finds Carter naked underneath Aiden. Only Aiden’s markings had been outside his doors, declaring him to be alone. If he’d strained his nose and hadn’t been preoccupied with thoughts he would have smelled both sex and Carter through the keyhole. “Do you have to fuck him? He’s one of Coombs’ lackeys for all we know.”

“Why would I make myself a lackey to a crippled madman?” Carter counters without missing a beat.

Marlon flares, drops fangs and roars a threat before he can stop himself. His pulse jackhammers face and chest flushing in anger. Aiden growls an icy threat in response, lowering himself protectively over his lover while tensing up to fight.

Marlon reins himself in with great difficulty, averts his face, licks his lips and backs out, closing the door after himself.

* * *

Since he got mated his Ruts have become so much worse. It hadn’t mattered since he’s had Charles. But this time, Charles is out of bounds. They’ve made a couple of more attempts to talk and get together but something always goes wrong. If Charles doesn't say something to piss Marlon off then Marlon says something that makes Charles smell hurt. But when Marlon asks why, Charles says everything is fine and mentally withdraws. It's frustrating Marlon to no end since he can't fix it if he doesn't know what he did wrong.

Today he had to leave a meeting early because his Rut affects him so strongly. He'd heard someone fake-cough 'weakling' at him behind their head. But he couldn’t keep sitting in there. Several of the Os in there had been coquetting at him, casting him surreptitious glances, biting their lips, running a finger discreetly along their neck to trigger their ear glands to secrete, fussing with their hair or clothes. One had gone so far as to pretend to lose her pen to give him a chance to deep-purr and offer her one of his pens so she could let him knot her. He’d seen the ploy but had handed her his spare pen and turned away. He hates it. Hates how every O within smelling distance will flirt with him when he’s in a Rut. It seems that since he went to war he’s as irresistible to Os when he’s in a Rut as Aiden is when he flares. It’s awful since he still doesn’t like sex with strangers even if his body’s screaming for him to knot someone. Charles is currently away and even if he wasn't, he doesn’t let Marlon that close. Keith isn’t around, Sean is away, Jed’s with Leoh and Aiden’s always busy. There’s no one else here he’d like to poke. Well. No one that would let him anyway. Naomi could probably do the trick too due to the bond they found in grieving together. They don’t socialize much but he’s found a soft spot for her by caring for her when she was injured.

He sips his whiskey and leans his head back on the backrest of the armchair. He’s panting open-mouthed, sweat plasters his clothes and hair to his body, his skin is crawling, he’s antsy and lethargic, fangs dropped, flaring with low intensity. He’s had an erection for six hours straight and it darn well hurts. Aiden never gets erections from simply being in a Rut. Most Alphas don’t, even if they might need very little provocation to get one. But Marlon just had to go be a special little snowflake whose body went and screamed ‘ **HORMONES!** ’ every fifth week. The one broken Alpha in the pack who doesn’t like knotting for knotting’s sake. ‘ _I’m not broken,_ ’ he thinks to himself but doesn’t really believe it. You can’t feel like you’re boiling alive and not think there’s anything wrong with you.

He’s withdrawn to a sitting room to listen to pirate radio and drink himself into unconsciousness. But drinking goes slow. His body isn’t grateful for the strong liquor and he’s only managed three glasses so far.

“... _Violence flarin', bullets loadin', You're old enough to kill, but not for knottin'..._ ”

He’s discovered something delightful due to pirate radio. This time at night they mostly play music. Banned music. How anyone could ever ban music eludes him but it has proven that he’s missed how music has evolved. There’s a lot of banned blues, but then there’s also this new rock so unlike the boppy, wholesome, Rock’n’Roll he’s used to hearing. This music is grittier, more about expressing feelings, reality, and critiquing the powers that be.

“.... _But you tell me over and over and over again my friend, Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction…_ ”

The songs have names like ‘Eve of destruction’, ‘Paint it black’, ‘War’, ‘Paranoid’, ‘The sound of silence’, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and ‘Blowing in the wind.’ If Marlon could, he’d ask them to play ‘Paint it black’ over and over and over endlessly. The music speaks to him directly like the music he’s been dancing to at the Sanctuary doesn’t. The nights he’s up writing he’ll have the radio on in the background, letting it colour the plot.

In his current state, he couldn’t write any more than he could focus on the meeting.

He smells the interrupter before he comes into the room. Carter saunters in with a small paper bag in his hand, looking as breathtaking as usual. You shouldn’t be allowed to look that good and have a pleasant smell to match. “Good evening, Major. Come to gloat at the weakling who can’t even sit out a meeting while in Rut?” Marlon says bitterly.

"No." Carter looks down at him, eyes shifting to take in the glass and bottle. These days he wears his uniform immaculately, like an officer should. "...I came to treat myself to some whiskey," he says smoothly.

"There is liquor available in literally every other sitting room," Marlon points out.

"Point. But this one is the only one with the desired company."

Marlon would have sneered but he’d much rather sit here and engage as little as possible, just kipping for air. “You should smile more. You’re prettier when you smile,” he says, voice dripping with spite. Carter used to have an easy smile. These days he’s as serious as the rest of them.

Carter huffs and then smiles an amused smile that makes his eyes twinkle. Marlon closes his eyes.

“What’s the point of faking a smile if you’re not going to look?” Carter says.

“I can hear how pretty you are regardless. What do you want, Major?” Marlon’s skin is tender, itchy and burning. If he gets any hotter he’ll break out in hives. 

“You once said friendly fire isn’t. In four days we’re breaking out General Hartley and you’re coming with us. It’s going to be dangerous enough as it is and I don’t want to take a bullet in the back.”

“Then don’t turn on us,” Marlon deadpans and takes another sip of whiskey without opening his eyes.

Carter is quiet for a beat. “Would it help if we fucked?”

“Ew. No. You want to pull wool over my eyes, sex is not the way to do it.”

“You truly think I’m a crony to a mad gimp?”

Marlon opens his eyes and growls threatening at him before he can stop himself. He quiets down quickly but the ire is there.

Carter narrows his eyes coldly at him. “He’s a cripple.” He takes a step closer when Marlon growls an icy threat again. “Enfeebled.” Closer still when Marlon’s growl goes up in intensity. “Lame.” Marlon’s fangs drop all the way down. “Invalid.” Carter comes close enough to lean over him. “Limper.” Marlon’s chest is heaving with the effort not to tear at Carter. Carter lowers his voice and looks Marlon straight in the eyes. “He is handicapped. I’m not telling a lie. His body doesn’t function properly. Am I not right? Huh?” Carter is right. Marlon hates that his backbone reaction to hearing Finn insulted still is violent anger. But Carter isn’t lying, he’s just using disrespectful names for Finn’s limited ability to move. Carter holds the position until Marlon stops growling and presses his lips into a thin line. Then he straightens up, drops the paper bag on the side table and reaches for the bottle of whiskey. “In addition, he’s mad. He isn’t sane.” He goes to the cupboard along the wall, takes out a glass, pours himself some whiskey and goes to put the bottle back on the side table beside the bag. “He’s also incredibly intelligent. Has a higher pain tolerance and more self-discipline and determination than most. And he’s highly educated. I’m not denying any of that.” He sits down in the armchair on the other side of the side table beside Marlon. “He has this idea of a perfect society and completely ignores the fact that people aren’t mindless. He wants to control what thoughts they may think. That is, to me, completely ridiculous and insane. To him, the price to achieve his ideal society, can’t be too high if the goal is accomplished. That’s madness. Nevertheless, I like the guy. He’s sweet, passionate, and oh, so very generous. But I never bought into his ideas. I’ve got a feeling you do, though. I worry more that you’d be the one to turn on us for him.” He takes a sip and arches an eyebrow in question.

“He murdered my daughter,” Marlon growls out.

“Did he really? If you build a tall building and someone jumps out of a window and dies, did you murder them?”

“Not the same.”

“I think it is. Coombs is one of the most brilliant politicians I’ve ever met and he’s not even officially in politics. When I was his lover I was naive enough to think nobody would ever listen to his grand ideas, but that’s not how he operates, now is it? What he does is make small suggestions that appear beneficial to the person he’s manipulating. Then they go on to manipulate other people like a game of dominoes. Like a game of whispers, things morph and go wrong along the way. If Coombs was directly involved in what happened to your pack, things would have gone differently. He has a good grasp of how pack politics work so he would never ignore a promise between packs and he’d definitely have made it his mission to find out what those promises were. The men who ordered the assassination thought they could take a short-cut getting you out of the way. As well executed as the plan was, the plan in itself was pure shit. In my eyes, those men jumped out of a window from a house that would have been perfectly safe if they’d used the elevator. So I wouldn’t say Coombs murdered your daughter, but I would say it’s indicative of what the America he wants, has to offer by way of freedom.”

Marlon just looks at him under lowered eyelids, opting for panting laboriously rather than answering. If he could crawl out of his own skin and go lie in snow, he would.

Carter leaves a pause for Marlon to speak but realizes no answer if forthcoming. "Are you getting treatment?"

"My mate won't let me near, so no. It'll get better as soon as the bond fades." Not much. But still better. He's had pneumonia and suffered less than he does right now. Unmated, at least his Ruts had been manageable.

Carter chuckles, eyes sparkling with amusement. "I wasn't talking about your Rut, but if you expect your mating bond to your truemate to fade because of a little conflict you're waiting in vain. You're both suffering from rejection depression which means that neither of you truly want the bond to fade. Thus, it won't. Not unless you keep separated for a year."

"There's no such thing as―"

"Truemates? Sure there is. It seems extremely inconvenient so I hope I'll never have the misfortune to run into any of mine. But we're going off topic. Are you getting treatment for your PTSD, depression, and insomnia?"

Marlon makes note of Carter’s ‘any of mine’ that stands in contrast to what he would have been brought up to believe. But then he scowls. "I don't have PTSD."

Carter chuckles again. "Oh, you certainly do. What you apparently lack is self-awareness."

"With all due respect, Major Wadsworth, go hump a cactus," Marlon bids him without much heat.

Carter smiles briefly then tilts his head curiously. "I've heard you use that phrase six times now and I keep wondering about it. You know you set yourself up for jokes with that prickly personality?"

Marlon's lips twitch in a show of humor. He knows. "If a joke isn't funny if it's on your own expense, it isn't funny at all."

Carter scrutinizes him looking for sarcasm before he smiles. "You're a very contradictory person. Tell me, why do you insist on calling me by my title?"

"You earned that title at the front. It wasn't bought. If I'd meet a Union General I'd call him a general too."

Carter purses his lips in thought and nods. He looks at the unlit fireplace in front of them. "You were right, you know? When we first met. You called me a disgrace to the uniform. You called me a whore. We grew up―" Carter stops to chuckle. " _I_ grew up," he corrects himself, "as James too would have, going to the finest schools, cramming useless knowledge, playing the correct sports, learning certain conduct. But it was demanded of me that I didn’t debase myself like common people. I wasn’t allowed to get a job. The two times I did take a job my father threatened to disown me. Apparently, we’re ‘too good’ for manual labour. And boxing, which I love, was forbidden since ‘I can’t walk around looking like a Primal, all bruised and battered’. And of course I should be an officer but Light forbid I’d see actual combat. I might get dirty and we can’t have that.” Carter’s lip pulls up contemptuously before he takes a sip of his drink. “So my job was to socialize and be pleasant in a way that reflected well on them. That’s it. Eat well, own expensive things, wear the latest fashion, converse and be charming. But anytime they disapproved of things I bought they’d freeze my funds. So when I met Joseph Manoli, an old Alpha who’s made a fortune on diamonds, and he discreetly put a hand on my thigh under the table and leaned in to whisper that I was beautiful, inviting me to come to stay at his estate for a couple of weeks I was startled but said yes. I was a virgin and didn’t quite understand what he wanted of me at first, but I figured it out soon enough. Dignity, who needs it? Manoli sung my praise when he met my parents, I hadn’t cost them a dime for weeks and they approved. Supposedly, Alpha on Alpha sex is a sin but if you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. All I had to do was disregard who touched me intimately and in return, I had a new kind of freedom. You know what that made me? A disgrace to the uniform and a whore.”

Marlon’s tipped his head to the side to watch him when he speaks. “There’s nothing wrong with neither Alpha on Alpha sex nor having mutually beneficial relationships even when the benefit is monetary. Using the uniform as a tool because Conservative aristocracy fetishises it? That, is a disgrace. Especially since you wore it the way you did.”

"I agree. I didn't back then, but I do now. I went to stay at the academy soon after Mr Coombs threw me out. That's when they ordered us all to the front. I was scared shitless and didn't want to go but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. For the first time, I got to be useful. I didn't know how badly I needed that until I was knee-deep in muck, bruised and bleeding because our intel was wrong, and one of my men, a Packrunning soldier who'd been at war for years, looked at me and asked 'What now, Lieutenant?' Since our initial orders had gone to shit I had no choice but to improvise. It was the first time I truly got to do something with all my academia and training. And it went well. Before… I’ve always felt restless and dissatisfied but that simply stopped. I got a true sense of accomplishment for the first time.”

Marlon hates that he can relate. He remembers his own frustration at not being allowed to help with the company.

Carter turns to look at him with his lips hooked in a small, lopsided smirk. “Thanks to you, I was terrified to mess up. The whole ‘friendly fire isn’t’ thing stuck. I saw it first hand as well. Another ‘West Point boy’ who kept leading with complete disregard for the men, making one foolish decision after another. One of his men’s guns accidentally went off and took him in the back of his head. Everyone in the squad claimed to have seen it and that it definitely was an accident.”

“It wasn’t,” Marlon states with complete certainty.

“Hardly. He’d been risking those soldiers’ lives needlessly one time too many so they pruned the tree. And I get why. Bad leadership could claim more lives than the enemy. I was scared I was next up. I remember being seated in the officers’ mess with peers from my own social group. They kept talking about the Packrunning trash acting uppity and I realised that that’s how I’ll get shot. I started eating with those I led after that. Mostly to discern who I needed to watch out for.”

Marlon takes another sip of whiskey. Carter could have acted like a snob and still be safe if he did his job well. But getting to know those he led was a good move. “You and I, we’re having trust issues.”

“Which is why I sought you out.”

“I told you, I’m not going to kill you unless you betray us. But I confess, I’m not thrilled to let you lead me in battle.”

“Oh, I’m not. Not this time, at least. Captain Mattsson of the Hales is in charge of the raid. From what I heard, he’s a veteran at these kinds of operations and it certainly appeared that way when we planned it. Although, I do worry General Hartley is dead already and we’re walking into a trap. What would you do if you’d apprehended an enemy general?”

“One with my grandma’s reputation? Killed her as soon as she was out of the public eye and claim she was accidentally killed while making a run for it. Heck, it would have been smarter to assassinate her at the front and make it look like the Union did it. She's been fighting for decades and so has a lot of veterans who will know she's a patriot. Many Packrunning soldiers know she split from us because she put America before her pack. To arrest her for treason makes it seem like the Union got into the Government."

"She did? I didn't know that. I knew the accusations were false because when I made inquiries about it they told me that she’d been seen sneaking over to the Union side to sell intel. When they told me the supposed time she’d been seen I knew it was false since I had been with her." He pats one of the two medals on his chest briefly. “She was hanging this on my chest while she’d supposedly been several miles away colluding with the Union. This was told to me by another General. A Conservative who’d been made General to take her place. I’m not stupid enough to protest in the face of the person who’d directly benefitted from her removal. I left him, debating who to approach to give my own statement in General Hartley’s defence, but when I came back two of my men had been arrested for equally fabricated crimes. That’s when I knew something bigger was going on. My main focus then was to protect my men. Hence, the outwardly mass-conversion under my lead. Ironically, because of that, I got trusted enough by the government to be promoted to a Major with more insight as to what was going on.”

Marlon doesn't answer and they sit in silence for a while. Carter sips his drink looking at him as if he’s waiting for Marlon to respond. Normally, Marlon would. But he’d left the meeting early because he can barely stand being in his own skin and he’s still too worse for the wear to be able to dig for information and analyze Carter for truth.

"I have something for you," Carter says and indicating the paper bag.

Marlon looks at it but makes no move to take it.

“They’re mine but you need them a lot more than I do,” Carter says, puts his glass down and takes the bag to remove a glass jar from it. He puts it on the table on Marlon’s side of the table. “They were released to the public six months ago.”

Marlon stares at the label. ‘Rut Suppressants’. “So. Either you’re trying to poison me or you want me sterilised.”

Carter chuckles. “Sterility is no longer a side-effect. The risk of getting someone pregnant is heavily reduced while you take them, but a few days after you stop using it your body goes back to normal. And they’re not poisonous. I told your brother I would give them to you. If you’d die of poisoning I wouldn’t live long after. Pick one out at random and I’ll take it along with you if it makes you feel more secure.” Carter smiles. “You’ll start feeling the effect within two to six hours and then it’ll take a couple of days to reach full effect if you take one a day like you’re supposed to. After that, you won’t get any Ruts until you stop taking them.”

Marlon looks from the brown glass jar to Carter and back, debating with himself. Technically, it doesn’t matter if he dies or becomes sterile. Hadn’t Phillip said their pack had to die for Packrunning to live on? He reaches out, unscrews the lid and takes out two pills, handing one to Carter. “You go first.”

Carter puts the pill on his tongue, shows Marlon it’s there, takes a gulp of whiskey with a small shudder, then gapes to show he’s swallowed.

Marlon sniffs the small, round pill. “It smells like Omega.”

“Mhm. And the Heat suppressants smell Alpha.”

Marlon hums thoughtfully then swallows the pill and washes it down. He doesn’t have much hope for it to have any effect. 

“Coombs contacted me, using his contacts to access me at the front,” Carter tells him and reaches for the bottle of whiskey to refill his glass. “He was very distraught. While trying to pull strings to get James Carhartt pulled from the front he’d found out who you really were. Naturally, I was intrigued. I didn’t know half of his scheming back then. I had met his babbling with enough scepticism that he hadn’t wanted to divulge it all. Now, when he contacted me he tried to reconnect, using the term ‘we’ve been fooled’, putting him and me on the same side to smooth over throwing me out. And if I was still a whore to the aristocracy it might have worked. But as it was, I was already reborn in my new role as a soldier. I played along because old habits die hard and, as I said, I was intrigued. Why would the notorious writer Marlon Williams pretend to be James Carhartt, a Conservative aristocrat?”

“I’m sure you know by now.”

“Indeed. But I did a little digging. Talked to members of the Hartley pack who’d seen you grow up. I read your books. Keith was near when I talked to a Hartley and afterwards, he approached me. You know, ‘Excuse me, lieutenant? I overheard your conversation, and if I may, what they said was complete, stinking bullshit.’” Carter grins. “He told me his view of you and it was totally different from what any Hartley had said. The image I’ve formed of you is very two-faced.”

“Is that why you slept with my brother? To dig shit up on me?”

Carter laughs. “Light, no! Aiden is the ultimate Alpha. He has it all. And how many times in life do you get to be with a red-eyed Alpha? Never, that’s how many.”

Marlon frowns in confusion. “You didn’t sleep with Coombs?”

“What?”

“Coombs’ eyes are red too.”

“Coombs can’t flare. He told you his eyes are red?” Carter asks with bemused amusement.

“He never flared for you?” Marlon lets his head flop back against the backrest, cursing himself inwardly. “If you chose our side because you think Aiden is a Chosen, I can inform you that Coombs also has a red flare so you can scuttle back to the Conservative side of this war.”

“He didn’t. And I have no intention to change ideology. But you’re telling me Coombs _can_ flare?”

“I’d never seen him do it until I was about to storm out and he threw you out instead. Since my alias James believed in the Chosen ones Coombs flared in an attempt to get me to stay. And you were wrong. I hadn’t slept with him before that."

"No. Aiden told me you have to love someone to be able to have sex with them."

Marlon scowls. "Why would he tell you that?"

"Because I told him I'd try to bury the hatchet between us and I figured offering you my suppressants and my body would be a good way to do it. Aiden agreed about the suppressants but told me sex isn't a viable option. A shame, really. Your scent and Aiden's are next to indistinguishable to me. Except for during your Ruts. Aiden just smells a little more Aiden. But you? You smell like the original sin."

Marlon tries to figure out how he feels about that. "It's not even true. I'm fully capable of sex without love. All I have to do is separate mind from body and I can fuck anyone."

Carter laughs a pained laugh. 

"You're laughing but it's not that hard. I cram what I feel in the darkest corner of my mind and pretend I'm not really there. I get an erection just fine and can do my duty."

"You misunderstood. I was laughing because I could relate. I like sex a lot but I've had my share of lovers with whom I had to dissociate to go through with it. Not since I went to the front, but during my time as a… companion."

"Have you had sex with Keith?" Marlon wants to know.

"Of course not. He's an Omega. When I get mated my mate will be the only O to ever have me. Or that was the plan. Then those bastards decided to start a civil war with the wrong motivations. Now my life will be over once the war is over since I chose to fight for the side that will remove my privilege. If the government wins I'll be executed for treason, if we win I'll be homeless and have nothing to offer a mate."

"Tssk. When we win you'll still be a Major and receive pay from the army."

"You assume I want to remain a soldier. I don't. It's not a life to offer a mate."

"I'd offer to hire you after the war lest you betray us, but I'm afraid our farseer has said our pack has to die for Packrunning to survive."

"Phillip?"

Marlon is genuinely surprised. He’s sort of accepted the idea that Phillip truly is a farseer. But even he has his doubts sometimes. "Yes. Most think he's just an old coon. How did you know?"

"He's not the first Farseer I've met. The grandma of one of our servants had the curse as well. They don't make much sense other than after the fact. As for why I pinned him as one of them? He told me not to forget the shed in the east corner, patted my head and called me a good boy and then later yelled at me for cutting down his apple tree. But I haven’t been cutting down trees on your property. I don't know, it just felt familiar. Old Mrs Robinson yelled at me for letting that horrible man cut ice. I was eight and had no idea what she was talking about. I didn't get Icewind until I was fighting in Canada. And I still didn't get it until that bayonette had cut her badly and I was cooing at her to calm down and hang on. I call her Ice, you see? But when I was a kit I thought Mrs Robinson was talking about actual ice."

Marlon chuckles. "I wish I could have real conversations with Phillip more often. I'm convinced he knows so much. He ranted about the Phineas files long before I met Sullivan Phineas Coombs, but when I asked him about it he called me stupid because apparently, I was the one who had told him to begin with."

"That sounds like a farseer to me. What exactly did he say to make you think your pack will die?"

Marlon lifts his glass to sip only to discover he'd drained it. Carter quickly refills it for him. Marlon sips and tries to remember, closing his eyes to envision that day under the apple tree. "I paraphrase: 'They'll say you're mad, and you don't listen to me. You never listen so I'm going to repeat myself; I support you. If you listen to them we'll live but we'll all die. Stay on course and we'll die but at least we'll survive'." Marlon opens his eyes to look at Carter. "That's what he said."

"That's quite a riddle. But it doesn't have to mean your pack will die. I'm intrigued, though. You're a very dominant and driving force whenever you're present at a council meeting. Yet you think you will all die? Why fight so hard if you don't see a future?"

"My daughter. I asked her to be brave and choose to be reborn."

Carter snorts his drink and has to cough before he can speak. "Light, that's insane! A soul that is reborn is scrubbed clean like a blank page. It's basically only the essence of life itself that wanders. You asked your daughter to cease existing! She could be reborn as any gender and designation anywhere in the world. And there would be nothing left of what makes her your daughter."

"She'd get a chance to grow up and to grow old."

Carter stares at him for a long time before speaking. "Some things you do start to make sense. You hate Conservatives but you're one of the strongest advocates for treating us well if we don't oppose your cause. No wonder, if you're fighting for a spark of life in the womb of a random stranger."

"When I was at the front I wrote her short fairytales. I've been reading them to her, one every night. I've asked her to move on once I’ve finished reading them all. I have seven more stories to read, then the clock starts ticking. I don’t know if it happens instantly or if it takes time to pass back through the veil, or when a soul attaches itself to a kitling in the Os belly. But we need to win and do it fast.”

Carter nods seriously. “Look, Jame― Marl― Mr. Williams.” Carter makes a frustrated noise. “I’m sorry, you haven’t given me new directives of what to call you. You defected from the army. Do I still call you by title?”

Marlon’s lips twitch in amusement. “It’s James to you.”

Carter’s lips pull up in a corner and his eyes twinkle with a hint of mirth. “James. Very well. Look, James, you’re a fanatic. There are many points where we don’t see eye to eye. But during war council meetings I listen to everybody. Even Conrad.” Marlon’s sneers a sound of disgust. Conrad Paulssen of the Lively pack down in Georgia has no place giving input on issues of war. Carter gives him a meaningful look of agreement before he continues. “I listen, and I hear what you’re saying. I’d say it’s a darn shame most don’t seem to hear you until you’ve been repeated―”

“I don’t repeat myself,” Marlon protests with a frown.

“No. But your brother does. And when he speaks people listen even if they heard the exact same thing with other words coming out of your mouth ten minutes prior. The bad thing about it is that Aiden doesn’t parrot everything you say. He, like most of you, is afraid to tarnish Packrunner reputation further. He wants to undo what decades of propaganda have done _while_ we’re still at war. To do that we’ll need a lot of time. We don’t have that time, as you yourself pointed out at our last session. The government has too much of a head start for us to do that. I’m fully convinced that if the civil war goes on for one to two years, they will win and America will turn into a Conservative version of the Union. We can kiss our freedom goodbye. I will die before I let that happen.”

“So will I.”

“That’s what we got in common. So. I’ve heard you talk about a list? Can I see it?”

Marlon digs into his pocket and pulls out a very thumbed, folded paper. He hands it over. “I’ve memorized the names so destroying the list won’t change anything.”

Carter snorts and unfolds the list. “If my parents aren’t already on here I’ll put them on here myself,” he says dryly then spots Porter and Selma Wadsworth on the list and chuckles darkly. “No need, I see.”

“You hate your parents that much?”

“Oh no, I love them. I just think I’d love them more if they were dead and in hell where they belong,” Carter says without taking his eyes from the list. He distractedly unbuttons his overcoat far enough to stick his hand inside and remove a couple of envelopes that he holds out to Marlon. He finally looks up from the list when Marlon curiously takes the stack of envelopes. “That’s all their correspondence to me since I left for the front. Go ahead. You can read.” He takes a pen from inside his coat and returns his attention to the list.

Marlon is curious as to what he’s doing but instead of leaning over to see what Carter is writing he takes the letter out of the first envelope and starts to read. Half a letter down he whistles impressed. (Or rather the opposite.) “Darn, your parents are toxic.”

“Mmh. I keep the letters to remind me I’d rather be the red right hand of freedom than being their useless and pretty advertisement slave.”

The first letter tells Carter to ‘stop the nonsense and come back home to do something useful’. In the second ones they say they’ve pulled some strings so he can leave without being court-martialed for desertion. The third scolds him for not asking to leave and for degrading himself by consorting with Snifflers and Stunted filth. They order him home to attend two debutante balls, because, as they say, ‘it’s time for you to continue the lineage’. “Tell me, Major, do you feel like I’m being derogatory when I tell you you’re beautiful?” Marlon asks, suddenly uncomfortable. “If so, that’s not my intention.” Well. Sometimes it has been. Like asking Carter to smile. But mostly it has been an utterance of frustration at being so awed by it. “You are the most aesthetically pleasing human being―men, women, Alphas or Omegas―I’ve ever had the fortune to look upon. Every time we clash my mind keeps stuttering in awe at how ravishing you are. You have a pleasant scent as well which is why I’ve reacted with such fierce jealousy. I can see anyone without a faulty sex drive like myself would jump at the chance to be with you. Reading the absolute dung your parents have been throwing at you…” Marlon shakes his head. “I once said your presence could be replaced by a pretty painting. That obviously isn’t true or you wouldn’t have a thousand soldiers devoted to following you.”

Carter chuckles and arches an eyebrow dryly. “You’re trying to boost my confidence? Fascinating. But, no. You were right. The version of myself, my parents want me to be could be replaced by a pretty painting, the version the army forced me to be, can’t. I remember you telling me I could take a job as a photo model. It’s a job my parents might actually approve of. But I’ve always liked manual labour. I don’t mind menial tasks. I remember how much I enjoyed helping our gardener out before my parents found out and stopped me from lowering myself to a servant’s level. I’ll admit I like living in comfort, having access to the finest wines and soft linens. But I don’t want to go back to being solely a pretty face so actor or model isn’t the jobs for me.” He chuckles again. “And please, refrain from calling your sexual drive faulty. You have the model drive for a Conservative and many would be envious if they knew.”

Marlon blinks in surprise. He’s never thought of that. But Carter is right. A Conservative is supposed to mate monogamously and be faithful to one lover for the rest of their life. That wouldn’t even be a challenge for Marlon if his mate was more interested in actually having sex with him. “A shame I’m not a Conservative then,” he quips.

“I’m glad you’re not. If you were, you undoubtedly would be fighting for the other side,” Carter says and goes back to scribbling on Marlon’s list. 

Marlon reads the rest of the letters. There aren’t that many but Carter’s parents tell him they’re funding something revolutionary and glorious that will bring them even more power and riches, and that he needs to come home and stop consorting with commoners and people of the wrong designation or what would befall them would befall him too and then he’ll have himself to blame. Marlon looks when it’s dated. It’s from before Marlon’s grandma was arrested. “You knew.”

“I knew they were up to something, but not what. Although, because of their warning I knew not to protest too loudly when they took General Hartley. I kept my head down to find out what really was going on, focussing on protecting my soldiers first and foremost.”

It annoys Marlon that Carter knew and did nothing. On the other hand, the whole Williams pack knew even more and did nothing. And to Carter, a lone man with only fractals of information, it was tactically sound to lay low. In fact, it was a Packrunner move to wait to act and make sure the pack (his soldiers) was safe first. Marlon puts the letters into the envelopes and hands them back, then gestures for his list back. Carter has added names, crossed out one, written a few other names in the margin with arrows to Marlon’s original names. “Why have you crossed out Marshall Dewbury?”

“Because he has a mental disability. I’ve had the pleasure to meet him and he’s a ray of sunshine but with the mental capacity of a five-year-old kit. His uncle is shady, to say the least, and puts his name on any ownership papers so he himself won’t have to take responsibility for the consequences of any criminal activity. I will not have an adult kit on a death list so I put his uncle’s name there instead."

"And you know for sure that his uncle is involved?"

"No. But if you put Marshall on the list I'm assuming you've traced funding to his companies and then it's his uncle's doing. Marshall loves _everyone_. I don't think he has the mental capacity to differentiate between designations. He can differentiate between nice and mean people so if you're nice to him he's a total sweetheart."

"Fair. These names with arrows?"

"The ones who control the people the arrows are pointed at. I think there must be forty fifty more names missing and we should find out who they are. But like you said, I believe that the war will end if we kill the people on the list. The problem is how hard it is to access them. Since they know they're dealing with Packrunners and not the Union they'll have stashed their families with guards on the estate and gone underground somewhere else themselves."

"Dealing with Packrunners…?" Marlon wants to know in what way a Conservative would find that significant.

"You never go for the kits and non-fighters," Carter clarifies.

Marlon drags a finger thoughtfully along his lower lip. "Then maybe we should."

"Kill kits?" Carter looks shocked.

"My daughter was murdered while cheeping. Of course I wouldn't do _that_. Cheeping kits would be adopted by a pack. But if they don't? Why not? You can't convince me all your Os are meek and ignorant about what their mates are doing. You say they know they're dealing with Packrunners so we might as well treat them as if they were like us. After all, the Light is originally a Packrunner god and a Conservative pair is nothing but a two-people pack. So let’s go for their Mains and if they're stupid enough to keep their kits with her then they better hope they haven't trained their kits to disregard instinct so well that they don't cheep."

Carter shakes his head, aghast. "That's insane! That's pure madness! That's targeting the truly innocent. You can't judge one designation based on the standards of ano―" Carter's mouth closes so abruptly his teeth click together. He covers his mouth with a hand and turns to stare into the unlit fireplace. His eyes are wide and horrified. Marlon sips his drink and thinks it's a great idea. The Alphas on his list are the most likely to raise their kits not to emphasize with anyone but their own kind. _They_ wouldn't put their kits in a Progressive school when they noticed their kits turned into hateful extremists. 

Funny how Marlon didn't figure it out until now. Jed had wanted him to broaden his horizons and see Progs as people too. It wasn't a punishment. And it had worked. Without it, Packrunners would have left Progs to fend for themselves now.

"What was it your farseer said again?" Carter says driftingly. "'They'll say you're mad'...?"

Marlon chuckles darkly. "To be fair, Major, they say that already..."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys. :)  
> I'm working two jobs this summer, working 7 days a week most weeks. I'm writing when I can and I'll be posting updates as fast as I can get them written. But time and energy to write are sparse. Just so you know what's going on. But no pity partying. The main job is great fun and I look forward to it every year. ^^


	31. Two Hopeful Losses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In these dark times, good things start happening. Not to Marlon personally. To him, these small happenstances are minor tragedies reminding him of the caducity of life that nevertheless gives him hope that there will be a life worth living after the war. People he loves gets to be happy and that's what's important.  
> He also meets a person who diverges from the norm in a way that Marlon finds stressful because he's never met someone like it before and there's no precedent as to how to handle it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: There is some wording that might come across as offensive to trans or gender-queer people in this chapter. It's based on Marlon's ignorance as he tries to figure out how to relate to the person in question and has no intentional malice behind it.

* * *

They're riding in the back of a truck, sitting on the floor along the walls in dull silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts on their way to spring Marlon’s grandma out of captivity. There are more trucks in front of and behind them. They can see the convoy snaking along the road behind them through the opening in the canvas cover. Aiden's eyes suddenly go wide and his head snaps to look across the aisle at Arvid. " _No way_..!" He whispers.

Arvid frowns in bemusement. "Wha―?" He sniffs the air, eyes going wide like Aiden's. "Who?" He looks around at all the Alphas in the truck with him, blinks in confusion, bends his neck to sniff himself then looks up at Aiden. "Tha― that's me?" Aiden grins in response. Arvid's mouth moves in confused wonder without sound for a beat. "I―? That's me!" His scent turns into a jumble of excitement, joy and terror. Aiden chirps in delighted amusement at Arvid. "Oh shit! By Ares, that's me! But, but, _how?_ "

Aiden laughs. "I'm sure you know that already."

"Yes, but he's supposed to be sterile?"

Their conversation has caught everyone's attention but not until now does Marlon catch on. He dives from his seat beside Aiden, throwing himself at Arvid to first suck at his neck―making Arvid laugh with a pinch of hysterics―then siphon. He discovers what Aiden and Arvid's freak noses already have picked up. He yips ecstatically, shoves Arvid's knees apart and faceplants purring on Arvid's belly. Arvid laughs again but Marlon can smell saline and looks up without taking his face from Arvid's belly. Arvid's grinning madly, blinking tears out of his eyes. "Crap, Peepers, I'm going to be a disastrous parent. What if I mess it up?"

Marlon wraps his arms around Arvid's midriff and purrs soothingly. "You’ll do fine. Is it Laurent's or…?" _Mine_ , he doesn't say.

"Laurent's. He triggered my Heat when he was in Rut last week. It can't be anyone else because he's the only one who's gone in bare and if it was yours we would have smelled it earlier."

Marlon presses his lips to Arvid's belly and mumbles into the folds of his combat uniform. "Hey, little one. You have the most extraordinary parents. Your daddy wished to live long enough to get to know you and maybe see you get mated and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you get to grow up in a world where you aren’t persecuted for being born in a pack.” Arvis pets his hair and he looks up. “You have a name in mind?”

Arvid barks a short laugh, still rattled by the unplanned pregnancy. “Darn. Why would I have a name when I didn’t think this was even a possibl―” He quiets down, eyes shifting without looking at anything, thoughtful for a while. “I always did like the name Peter…” he says at last.

* * *

Everyone is looking at Dick now, including Marlon. Luci can smell Dick’s vague anxiety. “Are you alright?” Marlon asks.

“I.. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, to be honest,” Dick says. “I think I’ve heard Peter mention his mom..?”

Marlon chuckles. “Indeed. Laurent wasn’t part of Operation Jailbird. We were successful in breaking grandma and the other prisoners out with minor losses. Sadly, our pack went down to 18 members then. But when we got back Arvid smelled pregnant even to the average nose. He announced that he was going to be a mom and that Laurent was going to be a dad. That stuck. Arvid found humour in the mom title. Plus, as far as I know Peter might refer to any of the Os that help raise him as mom.”

“Peter has a nephew..?” Dick says in a questioning tone.

“Not quite. There was an O that came back to the city after a long absence. She’d wandered, but when she discovered that there were so few original Hales left she joined the pack again with her daughter Talia. Talia was presented to Peter as his older sister, so Talia’s son Derek is thought of as his nephew. Like I told you, not everyone is as particular about lineage as I am.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Like my little brother Adam. He was a Juvie already and I was Siderunning as Main when he and his mom joined. But hell if I’m gonna let anyone tell me he isn’t my brother.”

“It’s why most literate packs write chronicles with a genealogy appendix,” Raphael adds. “Any kit born in a pack will usually get the pack name as their last name. But sometimes they get their O’s last name. Dean’s kit could be named either Williams or Winchester. And anyone joining the pack can opt to change their name to the pack name.”

Marlon chuckles. “It’s one of those little things that drive bureaucrats to lose their minds and that Coombs wanted to change. The Conservatives would have wanted any name changes to have to go through city hall. And not just so they’d get properly informed, but they wanted us to apply for the right to change our names. By today’s rules, you need to inform the authorities and apply for new ID and passport so your ID is up to date. And files will be kept to keep track of your former names in case there are warrants for your arrest under old names. But they can’t prohibit you to change your name even if you change pack bi-monthly.”

Michael puts his hand up as if they’re in school. “Father, I don’t mean to appear dense or anything, but could you please straight up confirm that Arvid and Laurent’s kit is Peter Hale. The same Peter Hale Dick was mated to in his youth?”

“It is, son.”

“Woah. That really puts things into perspective. I know I was born after the war and Peter Hale is what? A few years older than me? We know there were remnants of the Union stuck in America after the Union officially went home and the south and midwest had to deal with them for a bit longer. But I’ve never read even a hint about a civil war. Dick. You grew up on the streets. We were born not too long after it must have ended. Did you hear anything about it?”

Dick shakes his head.

“So the civil war ended about 45 years ago or less. And not a peep. Not a hint in magazines and history books. Father, I know you talked about a cover-up, but this… this is hard to wrap my head around.”

“Mh,” Marlon agrees. “But you must realise, son, that while we called it a civil war, and most Packrunners referred to is as such, the majority of the population didn’t. They were affected by the unrest but because of all the lies and propaganda most thought it was us acting up. What remains today still is fear and distrust. It would be more interesting to hear Dean's father tell us how it worked. He would have experienced the war on a ground level while we were up in the high level politics of it. And due to the Union war we spread the misinformation that the Union had managed to get moles into the government to cause the unrest."

"We've read that!" Michael exclaims and snaps his fingers. “ _That’s_ in the history books.”

"But why the hell would you protect the Conservatives?" Dean asks.

"We didn't protect the ones responsible. And it wouldn't have been fair to declare war against a whole designation. Especially since the poor were heavily, negatively impacted no matter designation. Plus, let's not forget the dedicated rebellion by Carter and others like him.”

“Why did Carter change his name?” Raphael asks. Luci and Mike turn their heads to stare at him while their father’s lips quirk in the corners and he gets that pleased scent he does when they’re being smart about something. Raff frowns at his brothers. “What? You haven’t figured out who it is? It’s all there. Carter himself mentioned the name he ended up taking,” he says.

Luci shares a blank look with Mike.

“You _have_ to see it,” Raff insists. “Certainly, we grew up with the man and that does blind us somewhat to his allure, and he has some facial scars to mar his beauty and some weight to make him look more mundane than father describes him. But he’s still a work of art.”

Luci frowns in thought. “...Red?”

“Red Wright?” Mike says, face smoothing out like he’s having an epiphany. “Our gardener?”

“That’s right, son,” Marlon agrees. “Carter put a lot of what I said to memory. And after the war, he approached me and asked if the offer to hire him still stood. It was a throwaway comment on my behalf when I said it, but he’d proven himself. And we already had Naomi on staff so why not him? He denounced his name and his heritage when he went into our service. Instead, he took a name based on his feats and his ideology. The red right hand of freedom became Red Wright while the social butterfly became a recluse. He might have said the war was the best thing that happened to him but he bore the psychological scars from it as do the rest of us. All our staff at the estate are Conservatives that earned our trust during the war and had nowhere else to go when it was over. They have all refused to convert and join the pack officially which is why I can’t bring myself to call them Siderunners.”

“Phillip really was a Farseer, wasn’t he?” Raff asks.

“That is my conviction,” Marlon answers. “Sadly, he did not live to see the end of the civil war. And while it broke my heart when he died, his was the least traumatic death of all. And if I ever have to die, I wish to go out like him…”

* * *

Through the window Marlon spots Phillip building a pyre dressed in his finest suit. Marlon frowns, wondering who they’ve lost now. He leaves the room and goes to find out. He runs into Frederick on his way down the stairs. “Who is it this time?” he asks.

“What?” Frederick asks in perplexion.

"Phillip is building a pyre. Who died?"

"No one, to my knowledge. And who knows what that old coon gets up to?" Frederick says with a dismissive gesture and keeps walking.

Yesterday Marlon had watched Carter have a conversation with Phillip outdoors. When Phillip turned to talk to one of his invisible friends Carter had turned with him and by all appearance directed questions to the invisible third. Marlon would give a lot to know what was said because it had looked as if Phillip was narrating the answers. Phillip had both petted Carter affectionately and grabbed him by the ear to haul him away to the apple tree. The respect with which Carter treats Phillip impacts heavily on Marlon's view of him even if he can’t bring himself to trust him.

Marlon hurries outdoor and jogs around the house to get to Phillip.

Phillip spots him and drops the large branch he's toting. "Come here and help me, you lazy brat!" He calls.

Marlon runs the last stretch and picks up the branch while Phillip collects smaller twigs. "If you tell me to help you, I will, but I don't automatically know you need help. I'm not lazy, Phillip."

"Excuses, excuses," Phillip mutters.

Marlon starts toting the branch towards the pyre. "So. For whom are we building a pyre?" he asks.

"Why, for me, of course."

Marlon stops dead and turns to stare at Phillip with a feeling of icy dread.

Phillip pushes his round glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. "You're not going to start bawling are you? Oh. Oh, there you go, all leaky." He sighs as Marlon's lip wobbles and his eyes start to tear up. "You're always crying all the time. Like a little kit."

Marlon drops the branch and goes to Phillip. He carefully takes the collection of twigs from the bemused old man, drops them on the ground and pulls Phillip into a tight embrace.

"Oh! Oh dear," Phillip chortles and awkwardly hugs back. When Marlon doesn't show any signs of planning on letting go Phillip resigns himself and hugs back properly.

"I love you, Phillip. I love you and I don't want to lose you," Marlon says, trying not to bawl like the kit Phillip accused him of being despite his throat constricting threatening to choke his words.

Phillip suddenly smells overjoyed and hugs a little harder. Marlon wonders if anyone in the pack has ever told him they love him. Surely, someone must have? "No need to be overly dramatic. I'm just dying. I'm not going anywhere," Phillip soothes.

"Yes, but I won't be able to see or hear you. I'll miss you. I want you to stay with me. Do you have to die?" Had it been anyone else, arguing about whether they have to die or not would have felt absurd.

"Tssk. Raising kits at my age? Moving into the city? No. It's not for me. I'll stay here and make sure Mr. Wright doesn't cut down my apple tree. But you'll come visit me in the summer and we'll share a couple of apples under the tree. Besides, I don't want to be tardy. They don't like that. Oh, no, they don't."

Marlon takes a deep inhale of Phillip's scent and turns his head to purr an all-is-well against his temple. 

Phillip chortles in delight. "You were always good to me, Marlon. Your purr is the best purr, warming my old heart. Not many have purred for me on this side, you know? Oh, no, no, no. Don't go getting sadder about me. I'm telling you you've made me happy. That's not something to get sad about."

Marlon chuckles through a hiccupped sob. "I love you," he repeats, and again through his purr ' _I love you_ '.

Phillip purrs it right back at him. "I'm old and tired, kit. My sight is getting foggy and my joints ache. I've seen so much and lived through so much. I've got great-great-grand-kits currently expecting, and I've enjoyed most of my life. I've been lucky. But it's time. If I'd stick around longer than I should, my body would start giving up. There would be even less energy, more aches, and my senses would give up on me one by one. You don't want that for me, do you?"

"No, I don't."

"Then help me build my pyre and hold my hand while I draw my last breath. They tell me it’s a bit frightening to cross over."

"I will."

They stand in the embrace for a couple of minutes more before they separate to build the pyre. Phillip smells happy and chatters away about this and that. When the pyre is built Marlon helps Phillip get up on it. A thought strikes him. "Heck! Don't die! Can you stay for a couple of minutes? I need to get you something," he says urgently. Phillip nods and Marlon takes off running. He comes back two minutes later with a pillow, and an apple from Phillip's tree. He puts the pillow under Phillip's head. "So you'll be comfortable." Then he hands the old man the apple. "And one for the road."

Phillip chirps happily and holds the apple to his chest. He smiles wide and soft, paper thin skin stretching over bone. "Thank you."

Marlon takes his hand and pets his unruly hair affectionately. "I'll miss your voice."

"I'll miss you hearing my voice too. It's so frustrating when you don't listen," Phillip jokes.

Marlon chuckles. He's feeling a strange mix of calm and sadness. "I'm ready to let you cross over. Thanks for letting me know you."

"Always too dramatic. Remember, I'm not going anywhere. Goodbye for now, kit."

Marlon smiles and squeezes his hand lightly. He starts purring since he knows Phillip likes it. Phillip closes his eyes and smiles wider with another burst of happiness in his scent. His chest rises and falls, rises and falls, and… never rises again. Every muscle in his body relaxes and Phillip is no longer there. Marlon can smell it. He still remains holding Phillip's hand, stroking his hair and purring for him for several minutes before he lets go and gives him a goodbye kiss on the forehead. He takes his packet of salt and reverently pours it over Phillip then lights the fire underneath.

As he stands watching the flames he's sad. But it's more of a nostalgic sadness, like when you finish reading a good book that had a satisfying ending. You're sad because you didn't want to leave the story, but also content because no strings were left untied. Suddenly he smiles, a serene feeling spreading inside. He can almost feel Phillip pat his shoulder with an awkward ' _There, there_.'

After all, Phillip just shifted dimension. He'd gotten to say goodbye, to tell the old man he loves him. And in this age of trauma and violent deaths, adults and kits being torn from this world in horrific ways, Phillip got to go peacefully when he felt content and finished with this life. This is what Marlon wishes for all his loved ones. 

Frederick is the first to come asking who is burning and one by one the pack members who are at home join them watching the flames, saying their goodbyes.

* * *

Marlon knocks on the door and waits until he hears ‘Come in!’ from the other side. He opens the door and remains standing outside. Charles looks up from his typewriter. “Oh. It’s you,” he says, first with a pleasantly surprised expression that shifts into something guarded and passive.

Yesterday Phillip died and Marlon’s still holding on to that bit of calmness he managed to grasp while watching the pyre burn. “Can we talk for a bit? I have things I need to say but I don’t want to fight.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Come in.” Charles gestures welcomingly.

Marlon shakes his head. He can smell Amara’s markings in the room. “I think it’s best if I don’t.”

Charles frowns a small, concerned frown and turns to fully face him.

“I’m not in a good place, Charles,” Marlon says. “You and I, we couldn’t have met at a more inconvenient time. Since you and I met the hits have kept coming and I’m barely hanging on. I want to be a good mate. I want to make you happy. But right now I can’t. I’ve got so much grief and anger pent up that I have no control over. And right now, I can’t focus on healing. If we don’t win this war we have no future regardless. And I want a future. Preferably with you. I have loved you from first whiff and I want to need you. I don't need you. We haven't gotten to that point yet. But I want to. I want a future where I can't wait to get home from work to tell you about whatever happened that day, to fall asleep with my nose against your skin, listen to you talk about your writing and co-exist with a sense of harmony. I want to give you everything you've ever wanted, whether you prefer it be served on a silver platter or as opportunities to work for a goal on your own. I want to talk to you, spend time with you, get to know you. And maybe someday have kits with you. But right now, I can't. I've been avoiding you because I'm so torn up inside I'm a ticking bomb. A landmine that goes off at the slightest disturbance. I'm afraid of messing up what we have further if I try to fix it right now," he rambles to get it all out before Charles has a chance to interrupt. He takes a deep breath and sits down on the floor outside the doorway.

"I didn't have sex with Keith to make you jealous,” Marlon goes on. “I want you to know that. I needed closeness that night. Just holding you would have been enough. But I bumped into Keith after you'd chased me away―"

"You didn't have to leave."

"Yes, I did. It would have been torture to lie there beside you and feel utterly rejected when I felt like I needed you. And Keith isn't just a random O to me. He's a close friend and my first lover. He's helped me overcome my feelings of inadequacy for having next to no libido."

"You have a high libido," Charles remarks.

Marlon chuckles. "Not even close. It's for you and for Arvid I turn into a knothead extraordinaire. You're special to me and while I _could_ spend my days making love to you, I'm more than happy to settle for just holding you and be close without sex. I _need_ to have strong feelings for someone to perform without feeling like I'm doing a duty and have to dissociate. But if you wish to continue to be mated to me, and I hope you do, we need to talk about sex. Sex with each other as well as with others. I will fight for the right to make love to Arvid if and when he lets me, and I want to be able to say yes if an O within the pack asks me to father their kit. I also want to be able to politely knot an O if I see her suffer as badly from her Heat as I suffer from my Ruts. It's not something I would take much enjoyment out of, but I feel it would be cruel to let them suffer through something I could easily remedy. As for sex with Alphas, I want to be able to have sex with those I love dearly. Jed, Aiden, Sean, Laurent…” He rubs a hand over his hair and scratches his back of the head in thought. “As for you… Yes. I’m a possessive bastard. I try not to be, but I like when I’m allowed to be. Naturally, I won’t have any problems with you taking polite knottings when I’m not around. But the fact that you don't want to have sex with me very often makes me incredibly jealous about you giving it up to anyone else. I can see that I'm not being fair saying 'only me' while handing you a list of names of people I demand the right to sleep with. So if you'd like to stay mated to me, I'd like to ask you to give me a list as well. Tell me who you want to sleep with, or if you meet someone if you don't have such list in mind already. If you tell me who and why I'll have time to come to terms with it and it won't be a problem. Or if it’s a problem it’ll be my problem, not yours. Bottom line is that we need to talk about it. Especially if either of us meet someone we wish to mate. I don't believe in truemates and as much as I'm not great at sharing, I believe that having two or three mates is ideal. Expecting one person to fulfill all your needs can be disastrous. I saw that for myself when Jedikiah lost his mating bond."

"You shouldn't have let Arvid go," Charles states.

"But I did,” Marlon answers with finality. “And I'm neither joining the Hales nor sniping their Main and Patriarch." He rubs a hand over his face. "Look, Charles, I'm broken into a million pieces and as long as we're at war I can't even begin to try to glue myself together. I understand if you want the bond to fade or even leave the pack. I wish that you'll stick around to give me a chance to do right by you but I understand if you don't. I know you're unhappy and I should be supporting you and ask you how you feel. But I'm barely managing to keep up a semblance of sanity. And I'm sorry. I'm well and truly sorry we got the start we did. I love you. And I'm sorry." He stands up. "That's all I wanted to say."

Charles is quiet. Marlon waits but when Charles says nothing, just sits there smelling and looking sad, Marlon turns to leave.

"I've gone to your new room just to smell your markings," Charles says hastily.

Marlon stops in his tracks and turns around.

"Your scent has nearly faded from this room and it makes me ache. So I've gone to your room just to smell you," Charles says sadly. Then he scrunches up his face in bemusement. "Marking up the walls in the corridor around and opposite the door seems a bit excessive, don't you think?"

Marlon's lips twitch in amusement. He sits down in the doorway again. "I was an unusually territorial kit. For midday nap time I used to take my pillow and toddle into this room, mark it up and go to sleep. I got to move in here shortly after and I'd throw violent fits if anyone entered my room without my say-so. This was my safe space. Then, when I was nearing the end of my kithood, as a punishment, the privilege of having my own room was revoked. This room was locked up and I got to share rooms with anyone I wanted. But often as not I'd mark up their wardrobe and sleep in there. I didn't get my room back until the end of my Juvies. Then I made sure everyone knew that I'd turn violent if they entered without permission."

"You needed a safe space even in-pack?"

"I did. I do. It's even worse now that we're permitting strangers to be here. I… When we got mated… I want to share everything with you. And you love that awful Alpha critter you're somehow related to, so of course I'm not going to protest her presence in our room. But the only thing I want to share with her the moment she steps over this threshold, is the sharp ends of my claws. I don’t, because I want you to be happy, but when she is in here I feel intruded upon and, I daresay, violated. Then I come in here and see _Carter_ of all people―" He cuts himself off, holds up his hands and bends his neck in a disarming gesture to show he isn't picking a fight about it. "I understand if you want to sleep with him. He's so beautiful my breath nearly hitches in surprise every time I see him. But I don't trust him. He’s too closely connected to Coombs. And even if he is here for the reason he claims, he’s still claimed my brother, my mate, and my room from me. His presence in this room completely obliterated any shred of sanctuary this room offered. I was so mad and devastated I wanted to lash out. I was too angry to rationalise between him and you and that’s why I left. I would never harm you, Charles. I know you fear me when I have my… episodes. But I would never lay a hand on you other than in self-defense if you attack me." He holds out his hands palms up. "You have to believe me. I haven't even laid a hand on your lowlife sister and she's tried to kill me _twice_."

Charles grimaces with anxiety in his scent. "She says those were accidents."

"They weren't," Marlon states with no uncertainty.

Charles presses his hands between his knees and looks at his lap, smelling incredibly sad. "She wouldn't―"

"Charles, there were witnesses. They weren't accidents. She tried to push me off the roof when we freed grandma and she aimed a shot at me three days ago when we freed General Pulsifer. Luckily, she's a useless shot. Don't parrot her excuses to me. I was there, you weren't. There's something seriously wrong with her. The obsession she has with you isn't normal."

"We're cl―"

" ―ose. Yes, I know. You were born minutes apart and have been inseparable ever since. You love her. I _know_. Which is why I haven't retaliated her attempts to get rid of me. But she doesn't love you. When you love someone you want them to be happy and you do what you can to make it so even at your own expense. You _don't_ try to sabotage what makes them happy. What she's doing isn't love. It's greed, obsession, selfishness and self-entitlement. And the way she's always trying to coax you to have sex with her? It's sick."

"Says the man who impregnated his sister," Charles mutters defensively without looking up.

"First off, we don't know that for sure. Secondly, that's comparing apples to oranges. You and Amara came from the same womb minutes apart. You have the same biological parents. Clara and I had no noted blood relationship at all. And while I still loved Clara during the aversion period, I could barely stand to be closer than 10 feet away from her. What happened between her and me is wrong but natural if an O comes back or sticks around after the aversion. It's a fundamental flaw in our design. It's the precise reason Os wander to begin with. But you told me she was never put off by the aversion even though _you_ were affected by it. So there _is_ something wrong with her."

Charles huffs. "I suppose there's something wrong with me too since the aversion period came and went and I still don't feel any sexual attraction to her."

"Don't get me wrong, Charles. At no point would I ask you to choose between us. You made it clear from the start that you two are a package deal. I don’t like your sister at all but I adore you. I’ll try to act decently towards her for you even though she and I mix about as well as oil and water. Luckily, I have a good brother who’s helping me. Aiden knows the stakes so he’s joined us in bed when Amara intruded on me while we were sleeping here."

"He only slept here for Amara's sake?" Charles asks in surprise.

"Yes. Why else would he sleep in _my_ room?" Marlon asks in confusion.

Charles chuckles ruefully.

Martlon tilts his head. "You don't like him. You feel about him like I do about Amara?" he hedges.

Charles smiles and shakes his head, amused now. "No. I like Aiden. Any conflicts we have always stem from yours and mine relationship problems. In all other aspects we get along well. He's charismatic, empathetic, intelligent and a natural born leader. We just don't have any common interests and I've never really liked to sleep with many people. Me and Amara always used to sleep alone in the same bed. More people than that and I feel…" He shrugs. "I guess I simply like to have a lot of space when I sleep." He hesitates and bites his lip. "So… if nobody but you and I got to come inside this room… that would include Aiden?"

It's strange to hear Aiden referred to as a natural born leader. Sure, Marlon knows people listen to him. He's made himself the leader of any group he's put in and left to his own devices, like the Alpha house at college. And his voice carries a lot of weight during war council. Almost as much weight as Jed's. Of course, they're both red-eyed Alphas. People are swooning at the sight of them. ‘Chosen ones’. But Marlon has trouble thinking of Aiden as a leader. "Naturally. Haven't you noticed that the only times he stepped right in was when your sister was inside at the same time as me?"

Charles shakes his head. "Haven't thought about it. But you wouldn't let him in if nobody else got to come inside either? Not even Amara?" he wants clarified.

"No. I'd prefer it that way. I'd prefer if we didn't let anyone but us in and any exceptions required we both have to agree to them."

"Even Arvid?"

Marlon nods. "Not even Arvid would be allowed to enter if you don't want him to."

"No, no. He's a perpetual exception as far as I'm concerned. I love discussing my writing with him and I love when you fool around in the bed behind me then spend some time talking to me when you're knotted. I never imagined wanting to get mated until I met you and I certainly did not forsee wanting another O to share my mate. But I do. So Arvid is welcome to come and go as he pleases, if I can decide."

"Me too. Somehow, I'd always imagined I'd end up with him. But you saw how much difference it made when the Hales came under his rule. Tactically, it was for the best."

Charles lips twist in discontent. He nods and looks away.

"Charles… Do you want to stay mated to me? Even knowing I'll probably keep acting as unpredictably as I have until the war is over and I can start trying to patch myself up emotionally? Or do you want to be free and do a soft fade?"

Charles gets up from the chair and walks to him. He goes down on his knees in front of Marlon and reaches out to cup his neck. "These last few weeks without you have been hell and I will never let you go." He pulls Marlon in to suck at the gland behind Marlon's ear and only a moment later they're desperately making out lying on the floor with half their bodies outside of the room, half inside. Charles suddenly rolls off Marlon, takes a condom out of his pocket and throws it on Marlon's belly. Marlon sits up while Charles gets on all fours outside of the doorway and unzips the back of his Omega pants. His pucker is already puffy and glistening of divinely smelling slick. Marlon rushes to get his penis out and sheathed while faceplanting between Charles' buttocks to lick and siphon the slick. It's awkward and fumbly to get the condom on in that position and Charles hisses impatiently. Marlon regretfully tears himself from Charles' ass to focus on the task, then finally pushes in.

Amara finds them like that, properly knotted together on all fours. She turns a corner and stops dead when she sees them. Charles looks up. "Oh. Ah, hey. You need to get your things out of the room and move them to your own room. Oh, and give Marlon your room key back. From now on only he and I are allowed in here."

Marlon smirks in malicious pleasure at Amara's stunned look, smug smirk widening further when she passes them with a baleful glare his way. Amara is banned from _his_ room and Charles wants him despite Amara’s best efforts to get Charles to abandon him.

* * *

Marlon never thought he would be happy to lose a pack member (Aside from Amara. She could die in fire as far as he's concerned.), but he was wrong. The day they find out that their pack has shrunk from 17 to 16 he ends up putting on a record to dance in celebration. He plays a piano duet with the lost member and finds out that Charles plays the guitar really well when he joins them. He goes out to salt and burn an apple and talk to Phillip to share the good news. Losing Phillip left a bittersweet ache. He misses the old man but the more he thinks of it, the more calm and contentment he feels. Phillip was in good enough shape to help build his own pyre, he died with a smile on his face. It's the ideal way to go.

This loss is of another kind but just as bittersweet. It's another loved one Marlon doesn't get to keep. "Sometimes I think Charles and Amara weren't raised right," he muses to Phillip around a bite of an apple as he sits under Phillip's tree beside the grill he used to burn the apple. "Charles told me he will never let me go. He didn't say 'I don't want to ever let you go'. He said 'I will never let you go'. Rhetoric is everything and when I have acted based solely on what I want in relation to another person, I've been promptly reminded by the pack that it's a flaw in me to be that self-entitled, that it isn't love. That if you love someone you need to let them go if that's what makes them happy. Like Jed did when I met Nceba. And it's hard. I don't want to let anyone go," he tells Phillip. "Were you around to see what happened? Okay, so…"

* * *

The truck comes to a stop in front of the gates and Marlon grins when he sees Sean on the passenger side. He gestures for the guard to open the gates to let the truck in then walks beside the slow moving truck as it drives up the driveway. It comes to a stop. Marlon sucks in a surprised breath when the passenger side door opens and Sean jumps out. "No..."

Sean ducks his head sheepishly, trying to keep the grin off his face. "Yeah… things didn't work out as planned..."

Sean smells jubilantly happy. He smells mated. But what stops Marlon in his tracks is the fact that Sean is packbonded to another pack. "Are… are you as happy as you smell?" Marlon asks.

Sean nods and shrugs, still sheepish. "Yeah… I am."

Marlon closes the distance to crush Sean against his chest in a tight hug. "If this is the way Phillip meant that our pack is going to die, I couldn't be happier."

Sean hugs back. "You're not going to try sniping me back?"

"You want me to?"

"No."

"In that case, no."

Sean laughs, spins Marlon around and marks him affectionately. "I need to introduce you. I have no idea if you'll hate or love each other."

"I smell three mating bonds. I doubt I'll hate all of them."

"Yes, but." Sean lets go so he can meet Marlon's gaze. "My first mate, they're a bit special. Like a roaring thunderstorm compressed in a small body. If they hadn't been we never would have met. The pack in Oklahoma I was sent to help? They're their Main."

"So how _did_ you meet?"

Sean grins and rubs his neck. "Weeeell, you know how I'm something of a cuckoo?"

"Uh-huh," Marlon answers dryly.

"The Conways, my new pack, own a logistics company. They, we, have supplied trucks and drivers to take fighters to their destinations. So I went with half the pack with the eastbound convoy I was leading to free people from a concentration camp. And two of the Conway Os were in Heat and not all that picky about condoms. And that went… well, you know I'll happily stud as long as they run in a pack. What they failed to mention was that they had a shortage of Alphas, right? So when they got back and their Main smelled that they were pregnant they went ' _ **Motherfucker!**_ ' and stomped off to kick my ass from here to Sunday. Only, when we got our first whiff of each other…" Sean sighs with a lovestruck smile and soft eyes. He sobers up. "Oh. They did kick my ass. But not until after I was properly mated and sniped. Like I said, thunderstorm." He chuckles with a note of pride. "Their Patriarch was a twerp so I challenged him. So now I'm Sean Conway, Patriarch of the Oklahoma City Conways. Pleasure to meet you," he says with a theatrical bow and a wink.

Marlon laughs with a burst of joy. Deep down he feels a little bit of envy and a little bit of sadness, same as he feels about Laurent and Arvid and their soon to be parenthood. But mostly, he's overjoyed about them finding happiness in these dark times. "You keep saying 'they'. Are they a pair of twins sharing the position of a Main?”

Sean scratches his head. “Uh. I wouldn’t say that.” He backs up a couple of steps to pat the passenger side door and gesture to the driver. The door opens on the driver’s side and the driver walks around the front of the truck. The Omega that steps into sight―Sean’s mate―is short, 4’11” at most, has a crew cut and is dressed in a plaid shirt with a padded trucker vest over. He’s grim faced. Correction, _she_ is grim faced. No, wait― 

Marlon scents in her direction, his direction, for all he’s worth. The Omega marker is strong but he can't smell a sex marker. None. He searches for ocular clues. High cheekbones, square jaw, round, soft cheeks, no stubble, the darker skin tone and eye-shape telling of a strong native American heritage, a strong, chunky but flat-chested body. The only way to know for sure if it's a man or a woman is to get them naked.

"You didn't tell me you have a brother," he/she says to Sean. The voice is equally neutral.

Sean shrugs. "You didn't ask."

Marlon grins and goes to stand on his knees, tilting his head to the side to offer his neck up for scenting. He no longer feels the need to correct the assumption of brotherhood.

“Polite motherfucker,” Sean’s mate remarks about Marlon standing on his knees for an easy reach.

“He can be when he wants to,” Sean says with an amused smirk.

Sean's mate takes the invite that―from Marlon’s behalf―is just an excuse to see if he can smell what sex he/she is up close. He/she offers his/her neck back but even with his nose grazing the ear gland Marlon still can’t figure out his/her sex. He’s never come across anyone lacking a sex marker before. At the Sanctuary he’s met a man who’s told him they’re woman despite sight and scent saying otherwise. That’s fine. If she says she’s a woman she’s a woman. He’s met Os wanting to be referred to as Alphas and then he’s referred to them as Alphas. The Sanctuary is just that; a sanctuary for people refusing to conform. Now this is completely new and it’s stressing him out not to be able to categorize, not to have clear directives of what to do. He gets to his feet and takes a step away. “My name is Marlon. What’s yours?”

“Max,” Max answers, lip curling upward in the corner in a smirk as if he/she knows exactly why Marlon asked. Granted, Packrunners aren’t very picky about dividing names into boy and girl names. But still, some names are more popular for girls than for boys and vice versa. (Conservatives and Progs were much more picky about that.) Max is a fairly neutral name, though.

“Without any intention to insult, I need to ask, how do I refer to you? With what pronoun?” It’s a question Marlon never in his life thought he’d be asking anyone. Ever.

Max snorts. “He, she, it, they. I don’t give a shit,” he answers with a dismissive gesture.

Marlon scowls and scoffs indignantly. “I’m _not_ calling you ‘it’. We’re being dehumanized enough as it is and it would be detrimental to our cause if we start to refer to each other as mere animals. I―” He suddenly remembers something, scowl disappearing. “Are you put off by pelting during sex?”

It’s Max’s turn to scoff indignantly and frown at him. “That none of your fucking business!”

Sean laughs and comes to put his arm around Max’s shoulders. “Honey, I don’t think he’s asking for the reason you think he’s asking,” he tells her, then he looks at Marlon. “You don’t have to worry. We’re _very_ compatible. Why do you think I’m so happy?” he grins and Marlon nods in satisfaction. It’s exactly why he asked. He remembered how vulnerable Sean had been about asking and while Marlon isn’t keen to admit it, he wishes he didn’t have to hold back two thirds of his own sexual preferences with Charles. He’s happy with how their relationship is getting a lot better since they moved in together and banned everyone else, but he simply has to ignore parts of himself to make it work. It’s worth it, but he wishes he didn’t have to. “Mar is very protective and considerate and he knows very well what I like in bed,” Sean tells Max. “He wants me to be happy. But aside from being polite he can also be a bit blunt.”

Max stops scowling. “I see. Then, Marlon, I can inform you that your brother looks like a fucking puma while pelted and who the fuck wouldn’t get riled up by that?”

Marlon shares a look with Sean and with matching shiteating, teethed grins, they both pelt at once. 

Max’s eyes bug. They look from one to the other and burst out laughing. “I’ll be fucking damned! It’s funny, you both smell the same but only one of your scents fuck with my mind. Lucky, or I’d never get anything done while I’m here.” 

“They don’t smell the same,” Aiden says, rounding the back of the truck. He’s pissed off, flaring. “Sean’s scent is smoother and sweeter. Marlon’s as spiky as his personality.”

“That’s Aiden, our second in command now that you stole Sean from us. He’s got a freak sense of smell,” Marlon tells Max before Aiden has reached them to square up threateningly with Max. Aiden is _not_ pleased with the loss of Sean. Marlon gives him 3 seconds to posture dominantly (Max doesn’t cower.) before grabbing him by the collar and yanking him backwards, pulling him away far enough to be able to speak privately. Aiden growls at him. Marlon shifts his grip to hold him by the upper arm instead. “We’re raised to wanting our loved ones to be happy. Sean is happily mated to three Os, has two kits on the way, and is the Patriarch for the Conway pack. He’s overjoyed. You darn well let him go or I’ll leave you,” he whispers harshly. 

Aiden compresses his lips into a thin line, nostril fluttering as he searches Marlon's eyes for truth to the threat. Honestly, Marlon's not sure if he could walk away from Aiden. But if they're going to lose pack members the only way Marlon can accept it is if they go with a smile on their faces. "Fine," Aiden says at last.

Sean coming home is a bit tense due to the circumstances but works out fine. Jed’s mostly sad about Sean leaving and negotiates pretty hard with Max about merging the packs since the Conways only have five Alphas and the Williamses only have three Omegas. But it’s a bust. Both packs are proud of their history and what they do. The Conways have been providing carrier services since the founding of the pack centuries ago. They delivered mail and packages by horse and/or carriages up until motorized vehicles started being more efficient, then they switched to trucks. They’ve still got several horses and breeds them for speed, doubling the pack’s focus to include horse racing just as the Williams are both warriors and businessmen. So for the same reason merging with the Hales would be a bad idea, merging with the Conways wouldn’t work either. 

Marlon decides he likes Max. He might be acting a bit prissily, though. The people he’s met at the Sanctuary have all given him clear directives of what to call them but Max hasn’t and it’s stressing him out more and more, making him waspish the same way liking Keith while Keith hadn’t shown any signs of liking him back made Marlon waspish in school. In hindsight, maybe he should have taken a page out of Sean’s playbook and went with his way of talking about Max, but he’d been too puzzled to think of that from the start and now he _had_ fuzzy directives he kept screwing up. Nearly everyone in the pack had defaulted to ‘she’ since Max is a Main and most Mains are female but Marlon resents that. He finds himself feeling as particular about Max’s preferred pronoun as he feels about names (Laurent/Charles/Carter calling him James). It rubs him the wrong way that Max hasn’t outright told him what to call him/her/them. It’s a growing issue where there wouldn’t have been one if he’d known. If he hadn’t liked Max he might have resorted to ‘it’ in sheer spite. 

Over dinner Max suddenly chuckles and says, “Boy, you sure can’t decide on what to call me, can you?”

Marlon frowns at them. “You told me to call you ‘he, she, it, they’. I refuse to call you ‘it’, but I’m honouring your darn request. I’m circling the pronouns until I get other instructions,” he answers testily.

Max blinks at him, is silent for a beat, then he bursts out laughing. “You’re fucking serious?”

“He’s serious alright,” Sean grins and rubs his temple affectionately against Max’s shoulder. “I suspect those tiny bursts of annoyance in his scent over the day is because he lost count and used the pronouns in the wrong order.” If Sean figured that out it’s no wonder he’s been sniggering every time Marlon got annoyed. Which is darn well lovely because it means Marlon’s making a fool of himself and people have noticed. Not that anyone had volunteered to help him out. Why would they? When they could watch him dig himself deeper down in the muck.

Max laughs harder. She calms down smiling at Marlon with a calculating expression, eyeing him a way that Marlon would take as an invitation to court someone back in the days when he was having duty-sex.

“Honey, finish thinking that thought and you will not walk out of this house alive,” Charles says icily to Max, not having missed the significance of the look. “Marlon is taken and his insistence is the main reason you’re not being submitted to a hostile takeover despite the rudeness you showed us by sniping a key member from us.” His fangs are elongating as he speaks, giving him a faint lisp, eyes glowing brightly and threateningly.

Max holds up his hands disarmingly and bends her head licking their lips. They don't smell cowed but seemingly Charles was spot on about what was going on in her brain. Max is definitely out to poach new Alphas for their pack. “I’m not gonna fuck your mate or steal any more of your boys,” he says. “But I’ll admit it’s fucking funny to see people try to work out what to call me, especially when they’re trying as hard as your mate. I seriously don’t care. Still, it’s pretty fucking telling, what pronouns someone chooses. Anyone calls me ‘it’ I know they have zero respect for me. Noseblinds are the ones who get the most stressed out about it. Generally speaking, if someone chooses a pronoun for me and uses it consistently I see no reason to change that.”

“Have you always been so accepting about missing the sex marker in your scent?” Leoh asks curiously. Up until now she’s been taking the coward’s way out by not talking about Max at all and barely speaking to him. Marlon’s not the only one to be stressed out by uncertainties.

“Fuck no. That came around my 20th presented age. Before I was too preoccupied worrying about how and what I _should_ be and how I was perceived by others. And as a kit other kits tried to pull my pants down to see if I was a guy or a girl.”

“I don’t think whether you’ve got dangly bits or a poking stick is important,” Marlon points out. “But you’re Sean’s mate and a Main to boot. I wish to show my respect for that and that’s why I asked for your pronouns,” Marlon says grumpily.

“Why not default to ‘she’ since I’m a Main?” Max asks with amusement. “Most Packrunners do.”

“Showing you respect would entail using the pronouns you are most comfortable with, not the ones I like the most.”

Max sniggers. “You know what? Go for ‘they’. That’s what my asshole sweetheart calls me and it’s rapidly growing on me,” they say and lean in to kiss Sean’s shoulder briefly. 

As soon as Marlon’s got a clear directive something inside of him sighs in relief. After dinner he pulls Max aside to apologise for coming across as an asshole when his intentions were the opposite. He never gets to utter that apology. As soon as they’re out of sight Max boxes him in against a wall with a cheeky, seductive smirk. They might barely reach him to his chest but he’s taken off-guard and lets himself be pushed and pinned. They’re an allied Main after all. He’s startled and a bit shaken when they proposition him and run a slick-coated finger over his lips like Arvid had done to Texas Joe all those years ago. He opens his mouth and licks the finger on auto pilot. They taste good, and the suggestion of a pelted threesome with Sean is alluring if only because it might be the last time he’ll be able to make love to Sean. But he’s rattled because less than an hour ago they’d told Charles they wouldn’t touch Marlon. Max is ruthless and unscrupulous which is a big part of what he likes about them, but he realises he needs to be careful because when it comes to bond-warfare Max probably knows exactly what they’re doing and he’s but a novice in comparison. 

The sting of anger and a cleared throat draws their attention to Naomi who’s come to a stop nearby. She fakes a smile with teethed canines and a dark look in her eyes. “Master’s mate is looking for him, I believe,” she says pointedly.

“Well then I’d better go find my man then,” Max says and pushes themselves away from the wall. “Think about it,” they mouth to Marlon before they retreat.

“Thank you, Miss Naomi,” Marlon says still a bit rattled. “Is Chuck angry at me?”

“As far as I know, Sir, he hasn’t noticed you’re missing yet,” Naomi answers.

Marlon sags in relief. He feels like he dodged a bullet before he was even aware someone was firing at him. He thanks Naomi for the save again and returns to the others, finding Sean playing piano in one of the salons. He sits down on the piano bench beside Sean to play a duet, pretending nothing happened. But inwardly he tells himself he needs to be careful precisely because he likes Max, and Finn had snared him in much the same manner albeit less calculated.

* * *

Both Sean and Max look stupidly in love when they look at each other and they keep touching each other briefly as if they need to be reassured the other one is still there and they didn’t just dream each other up. Max has a large personality that takes up a lot of space. They curse a lot and is unrefined and in your face. Marlon likes it but Aiden doesn’t. The only thing Marlon doesn’t like about them is their taste in clothes. (Who wears plaid anyway?) While Max is present Charles is unusually clingy. He’s always been jealous, but normally he’d withdraw and act prissy about it, not be clingy and possessive. Marlon doesn't know if it's because of the talk they had or because Max is so clearly out to poach Alphas. It doesn't matter as long as he isn't getting the cold shoulder.

* * *

"Stop sniggering, Mikey, there's nothing fucking wrong with plaid,” Dean says. He might sound annoyed but his lips twitch and his eyes twinkle with amusement.

“Of course not,” Marlon agrees solemnly. 

Luci sniggers but Raphael smells excited and isn’t interested in style choices. “Father,” Raff says, “we’ve always been told we lost all of our pack during the war… Are some of our family members still alive? Is Sean still alive?”

Marlon’s face goes soft as he smiles. “Most of us died violent deaths, but some of us got happy endings. Sean is one of them. He’s still alive. We’ve met up a couple of times over the years and we send each other pictures bi-monthly. We also employ their services when we need shipping in that area but I have not introduced you because Max is a menace with no scruples who still poach Alphas to their pack. Pack-wise our relationship is somewhat the same as our relationship with the Hales since Peter took over. Peter would gladly see us destroyed but won’t make a move to see it happen as he realises the political consequences should that happen. Max would dearly like to make a hostile takeover and swallow us up to their pack which would end the Williams saga as surely as a pack war with the Hales could have done if we’d been unlucky. So to avoid getting snared by that wily thunderstorm of a Main, Sean agreed that avoidance was the best solution."

"You send each other pictures?" Dean asks.

Marlon takes his phone and opens up the gallery. There's a folder named 'Dirtroad Trucker' which he opens and hands over to Dean. The others scramble to hang over his shoulder to look. "Holy fuck! This guy looks like a funhouse mirror image of you," Dean exclaims. He's not wrong. Sean is an older, thinner version of their father. But he's got a beard, wears a trucker cap, plaid shirt and a padded vest or jeans jacket - clothes their father dislikes. And the only time Marlon would let himself be caught with a full beard like that is if he was stranded on a desert island with no means to shave. Luci notes in amusement how Dick and Dean react differently, Dean with enthusiasm and Dick with faint disgust. It reminds Luci of Dick’s breakdown in college when he, in pure horror, had made a comment about having to grow a beard. Sean’s beard is well-kempt, his eyes always twinkling and smile wide and genuine in all pictures. They aren’t that many, and they seem to be Snapchat screenshots which would explain why there aren’t more. One picture is of Sean taking a selfie in the middle of a narrow road pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. Behind him stands a huge bull blocking the road. There’s a strip of text over the picture. ‘Would you believe this fucker? Hasn’t moved for 45 fucking minutes!’ Another picture shows him with his arm casually thrown around the neck of a girl that looks a lot like him. She looks to be laughing and Sean is grinning, pinching his nose. ‘Time for this stinker to GTFO!’ Luci sniggers at the joke about the aversion period of a presented Omegan offspring. There’s a picture where Sean’s holding the camera over himself with an _oh shit_ -expression. There are at least seven laughing kits around 5-7 years old climbing on him. The text strip reads ‘HELP! I’ve made a terrible mistake!’ Dean cackles at that one. “Are they all his?”

Marlon sighs and shakes his head at the folly. “Yes. A little tip, love, never make a cuckoo your Patriarch. His willingness to impregnate Os paired with the compulsion to be with him makes for bad news. Although, most of his offspring are girls who present as Alphas so their pack’s problem is solving itself.”

Dean scrolls back to the ‘stinker’ picture and zooms in on the girl’s face. “Dude, I’ve met her. I think her name is Kim. She was driving a Conway Carrier truck that broke down going through my hometown. So me an’ Bobby fixed it. Kinda bonded with her over cars. She called her truck baby an’ everything, just like me. But she was still a Juvie. 18 years maybe?”

“Sounds like Kim,” Marlon agrees and retrieves his phone back. “I’ve always found it strange how people in the occupied areas adopted Union expressions. You use kitling and baby interchangeable, and sometimes talk about childhood instead of kithood.”

“Those are Union words? I thought they came from Betas trying to distinguish themselves from us ‘animals’,” Dick says.

“Mmh,” Marlon agrees, “but no one used them before the Unionites came. Per definition when speaking about humans, a baby is a static human’s offspring and not a kit from a morphic human. But in the previously occupied areas nobody does that distinction and the words have become synonymous.”

“Do we have more living relatives we don’t know about?” Mike asks. Luci’s also curious. It isn’t really that strange not knowing. Packs divide sometimes and then either animosity or distance solidifies the rift. 

“Why would they leave?” Raphael is more interested to know.

Marlon hums. “Well, we were losing, and we were losing fast. Opinions of what to do about it started to collide. If we’d respond with the violence needed we would play right into the propaganda spread about us and ordinary, decent people who were barely aware that a civil war was going on might start believing the lies said about us and take up arms. But if we were careful not to solidify those lies our progress was too slow and we would lose. Now, having a charismatic red-eyed Alpha on our side was good. Having two, who more and more often ended up on different sides of an argument, was abysmal…”

* * *


	32. Two-Timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marlon's paranoid. He's well aware it might just be a symptom of his PTSD. It's hardly his only symptom. But he can't get his suspicions out of his head. Meanwhile, months tick by and their chances of winning look increasingly bleak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wohooo! The end is near! :D  
> Sorry, y'all had to wait for this one. On the upside, we have a definite ending in sight! *dances happy jig and points at chapter indicator above* And the summer's hellish work schedule is nearly over. My two-week vacation starts soon. Now all I have to do is wait for my Beta reader to get some time left over to devote to me and the next chapter. I'm incredibly grateful for all her help and your comments as well. :D

* * *

“No. We’re running out of time and they’re picking us off one by one. If this goes on for much longer we’ll all be dead. We can't be cautious and diplomatic. We need to go for plan B. Assassinate everyone on this list without negotiations and the war will be over," Marlon says looking at Jedikiah and stabbing at his copy of the list in front of him on the conference table. The table has about fifty high ranking people sitting around it, each provided with a copy of Marlon's list. They're mostly Packrunners but some are Progs or Conservatives who've joined their side. The Williams pack has shrunk to eleven members now with only two Os left - Leoh and Charles. Because of that, both are in the room albeit standing along the wall with other people who aren't high up enough to have a seat at the table, in- and out-pack. Neither Charles nor Leoh are suited to be a Main. They're too young and inexperienced. Leoh doesn't want to be a Main and Charles isn’t ready for it. He’s asked to get to shadow Jedikiah, be present at any meeting and updated on _everything_. He’s being schooled for the job and seems to enjoy himself, but he’s not ready by far. At least he isn’t scared by the prospect of becoming one like Leoh.

"It would be inadvisable to straight-up murder people in the way you’re suggesting. Firstly, we don’t know where they are. They’re hiding and they will with no uncertainty surround themselves with innocent people so we can’t―”

“They’re _not_ innocent,” Marlon interrupts Jed. “You’re thinking of their mates and servants. And they are complicit.”

“The servants are forced to―”

“No,” Marlon interrupts again and stands up. “Their servants are not innocent. You all need to stop thinking of them as you think of employees in our companies and start thinking of them as the domestic parts of a pack. Yes, some of the aristocrats treat their servants badly. Most pretend they're not there at all unless they need them. But what you fail to realize is that servants in these households are well off in the general society. They live in simpler quarters in the mansions, they have access to all the latest amenities, are well paid, and well respected in the surrounding villages. They live with their masters and raise their families on their masters' property. In many cases, they're also lovers of their masters. They help keep their masters' secrets and uphold appearance outwardly. They're highly trusted people whose families often have served their masters’ families for generations. Their loyalty goes far beyond a paycheck and they're _not_ slaves. They can quit at any time and if they go they will have savings and often walk away with basic literacy that they didn't have before their employment." Marlon turns almost accusingly towards Carter who as usual has chosen to sit beside him. "Refute me," he demands.

Carter shakes his head. "No, you're a 100% accurate. Our servants are an extension of our families and our power. Mistreat them and you'll find your secrets revealed and fall out of favour with your peers quickly. In most cases, they'll defend us with the same loyalty Naomi shows you. She is a perfect example of what our servants are to us. I've told her of Marlon's plan C and she's still die-hard on your side despite being morally against it."

"What is plan C?" someone asks.

"Out of the question," Jed says decisively. "I don’t want to hear plan C mentioned again. For as long as I'm the head of the Williams pack we will never target kits and that's final," he says without explaining Marlon's suggestion to target the families. "If we do, we deserve to be hated and feared. 50 years from now we'll still be ostracized and shunned if we go down that road. So it's a no."

The discussion goes on, going nowhere. Marlon might repeat an opinion on different meetings but never again on the same meeting unless prompted to do so. Sadly, that doesn't go for everyone because the discussion goes in circles with the same people repeating the same things only louder each time. Marlon crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair, bored and annoyed. He's not the only one who's lost interest. Carter leans in close, puts an arm on Marlon's backrest and whispers "What happened yesterday?"

Marlon pinches his lips. He wants to tell Carter it's none of his business. But Marlon was under his command when it happened. He leans in to whisper his answer straight into Carter's ear. "Nothing to talk about. You were right, that's all," he whispers as nonchalantly as he can.

"About…?"

"I clearly suffer from PTSD and I triggered. I would have thought that's something that would happen _after_ the trauma as the name implies and we’re still in the middle of the war, but lo and behold." Carter already knows what happened. The fighters Marlon led had already reported, probably in much greater detail since Marlon doesn't remember squat for a full hour.

Carter reaches out to pull at Marlon's hand to inspect it, then looks at his face. "Was it your feet?"

Marlon knows what he’s asking and takes a deep breath, looks around to see if anyone is trying to listen in on their whispered exchange then tucks his head in by Carter's neck. He talks so quietly so he has to graze skin to be heard. Carter gets goosebumps and his glands start leaking. It's not why Marlon does it―Carter is the philanderer of the two―he just doesn't want to be overheard. "Arvid Mattsson of the Hales. I love him and have known him since I was a kit. He used to be a mercenary and we'd run into each other every other year or so. This is relevant. Yesterday I was leading my squad to the cells in the basement as ordered. Everything was going smoothly…"

"I know. Your men told me you were fighting like a fiend from hell and loving it," Carter responds.

"Yes, well, there's only so much furniture you can replace and I do get the blood fever,” Marlon answers a bit irritably. “Anyway, in the four last cells there were prisoners who'd been tortured for information. In the second cell I entered, two prisoners were sharded. I don't remember shit after that. I've only seen one person sharded before and that's Arvid. He was a prisoner in the camp where I met my Charles and I damned near ceased functioning when I realized what those spikes were for. Jedikiah had to talk me through it to keep me passably calm. And when I saw those prisoners I first felt hot and cold then I don't remember squat. Next thing I remember I’m outside on the grass curled in on myself, hugging my knees shaking and you’re standing over me pointing a gun at Amara shouting at her to get the fuck away from me. So if anyone can tell me what the fuck happened between here and there it’d be you. But I get if you don’t want me under your command again.”

“Oh, no, I definitely do. But I’ll see to that you’re paired up with someone who can handle you if it happens again. Is it a common occurrence?”

“It was the first time.”

“Good to know. I mean this with no disrespect, but I wouldn’t want to take you off fighting-duty even with the risk of that happening again despite putting your life at risk if it does. You Williamses, especially of your bloodline, have an affinity for well-executed murder and violence and I intend to milk that for all it’s worth.”

Marlon rests his forehead against Carter’s shoulder as he digests that. For the rest of the world, it must look like they’ve randomly decided to cuddle while in reality, it’s Carter allowing himself to lose face in front of the other Conservatives in the room so that Marlon can hide his shame over the topic at hand. But Carter’s admission is a two-edged sword. On one hand, Marlon would do the same. Most fights these days are rescue-missions to break out Packrunners from concentration camps they’d been put in for breaking newly instated laws, or rescue rebel leaders like yesterday. The concentration camps are one thing, basically people stashed together too tightly in inhumane conditions. But the captive rebel leaders another, kept in high-security facilities where they are tortured to divulge information about their activities. Marlon’s been coming along on several such missions and they are usually led by Arvid or Carter. It’s a catch 22 for Marlon to come along since it gives him an outlet for his anger but it also makes him more prone to violent outbursts, hence his comment about replacing furniture. Either way, letting someone loose who can remain disciplined but enjoys the killing and is good at it, is something Marlon would do too. _But_ , and it’s a big but, when Carter admits doing that he also heightens Marlon’s suspicion of him being undercover for Coombs. Why? Because if he consistently places the Williamses in the front line as he’s done, he might be part of the reason for the steadily declining numbers of the Williams pack. It’s a good way to weaken the pack, discreetly chipping away at it without taking any blame. The Williams pack is the driving force for the nationwide unity of the rebellion. This is a communication center where decisions are made that impacts all packs. They fund a great part of the rebellion as well. It would be all too easy for Carter to get them out of the game discreetly. After all, Sean has two Union medallions from his time undercover. 

“Tell me what happened during my blackout,” Marlon asks.

“According to your men, you froze up completely and if they touched you, you’d cheep like a kit. You didn’t react when they waved in front of your face or talked to you. They managed to haul you outside and push you into a sitting position which is when you curled in on yourself. Then Amara offered to keep an eye on you while they went back. I chased her off as soon as I saw it.” Carter had been the one to catch Marlon when Amara tried to push him off the roof, he’d witnessed her second attempt too. He might have steered off a third attempt by chasing her off. Depending on Carter's game, gaining Marlon's trust could be vital. Marlon's so torn about Carter. This conversation makes him angry, anxious, afraid and paranoid. Luckily it doesn't translate to his scent.

... Unless you're a freak of nature, with a nose that can darn well read minds, that is. "Everything alright over there, Mar?" Aiden asks, eyeing them with a concerned frown from beside the head of the long table.

"Yes, would you mind sharing with the class?" Mr. Arnold, one of the Conservative aristocrats on their side (there are only three of them, Carter included) says with a demeaning smirk looking at Carter. His scorn isn't directed at Marlon. The aristocrats regard Packrunners as animalistic, hedonistic rogues with no finesse. But Carter is fraternizing with Marlon in a very unsuitable way right now - with no discretion. 

"We're colluding to overthrow the government," Carter answers, making people laugh. He kisses Marlon's forehead, gives him an affectionate temple rub and pulls away to sit properly. It's a ruse to reinforce the view of having cuddled, painting himself as a disgrace in the eyes of his aristocratic peers in order to let Marlon save face. Marlon understands that but he's still a bit rattled by the unexpected familiarity.

* * *

Carter stands with the other two aristocrats on the driveway, heads close together. Marlon's hackles instantly go up, paranoia haunting him. He elongates his strides until he's getting closer when he shifts to a saunter with hands behind his back. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he greets. 

“Perfect,” Carter says, smiling and stepping aside to open up space for him to join them. “Just the man I was hoping to see. I was telling Mr. Arnold and Mr. Bonnivier about plan C since your elder wouldn’t explain. Could you perhaps tell us yourself?”

“Not much to tell. Go for their mates and kits. Adopt any kit that is cheeping and kill the rest."

"That's a vast oversimplification of a plan," Mr. Arnold says. "Unless cruelty and mayhem are what you're going for?"

Marlon takes up position in their circle, falling into the aristocratic posture unthinkingly like letting out a breath you’ve held too long. "Naturally, it isn't. While I can see the merit of hitting a few families without warning at first, it serves no point unless we leave room for negotiation. I cannot fathom that you for all your differences wouldn't have your Alpha instincts intact."

"Quite right, Mr. Williams. We all know that despite your brutish ways, few Packrunners would target kits unless the kits themselves are fighting. If I'd chosen to fight on the government side I would have considered my family to be safer at home than at my side," Mr. Bonnivier says. His family is staying with him here. Sadly, they rarely leave the rooms they’re assigned so Marlon hasn’t had a chance to play with the two kits.

"Which is the mistake I made when I went to Canada, thinking my daughter safe at home. My proposal is to raid the homes of everyone on the list you were presented with, at the same time. Leave dead behind in a few select households and kidnap the rest, then leave an invite for negotiation. My plan is…" Marlon details his suggestion.

"The idea is absolutely abhorrent," Mr. Bonnivier says. "However, I will vote for it in the council. It will most definitely work and I do believe that if this war goes on for much longer the atrocities committed by both sides will greatly surpass what this proposal offers. Besides, who’s to say that the methods used to get rid of you won’t be used against us in the future."

"I too shall offer my support to the suggestion if you add the Battenbergs to the list," Mr. Arnold says.

"May I inquire as to why they should be added?" Marlon asks.

"The Arnolds and the Battenbergs have a century-old family feud ongoing and Mr. Arnold offered us his allegiance due to the sole reason that the Battenbergs are financing the opposition," Carter offers.

"I see," Marlon says. "Very well. I shall have their names added. But I must point out that Jedikiah has rejected the plan out of hand and as such, it will not be brought up to discussion."

"A shame. Nevertheless, my support for it stands. Although, Mr. Williams Senior might be opposed to it, but I haven't heard Mr. Kit Williams express an opinion yet."

"Nor will he. He's but second in command," Marlon points out. All the Conservatives refer to Aiden as ‘Mr. Kit Williams’ in a show of respect. Progs instead said Williams Junior.

"To you, perhaps," Mr. Bonnivier says. "But to most of us, the Chosen Ones are of equal standing."

* * *

Carter walks with Marlon back in. "James, I mean no disrespect in saying this but you are blinded by your bias." Carter always uses ‘James’ unless they’re in a company and it needs to be clear who he is talking about or to. Marlon likes it. He’s not sure why. He tells himself it’s because Carter respects his instructions, but today he wouldn’t take offense if Carter used his real name.

"How do you mean?"

"After lunch is done and the council continues, keep an eye on your brother. Try to pretend he isn't your brother. Imagine him with yellow eyes if you must. Then, if you manage to separate your perception from your familial ties, look at how everyone else in the room reacts to him versus Jedikiah. Make note of their designations. I believe what you'll see will surprise you." Carter taps his nose conspiratorially then gives Marlon a nod goodbye and goes on his way.

That afternoon Marlon doesn't speak during the meeting. Instead, he watches. It's not until he manages to ignore the redness of Aiden's flare and mentally replace it with yellow he gets what Carter was talking about. Aiden is dominating in his own right. At no point is he interrupted when he speaks. Neither is Jed. It's strange because Marlon can't remember that they always get to talk uninterrupted like this. That's when he realizes that the only person not respecting them enough not to cut them off is currently keeping quiet in favour of studying them. But why do other Packrunners afford Aiden the same respect as Jed? The question puzzles him. He pulls at his lower lip thoughtfully and lets his gaze wander to everyone standing along the walls. His gaze snags at Leoh and Charles. Maybe that’s it? The Williams pack currently doesn’t have a Main. No Omega has stepped up to the plate, but a young Alpha has. Supposedly, a pack can’t have two Patriarchs or two Mains. But a pack bigger than seven or eight people is presumed to have two leaders sharing responsibility. Maybe that’s it? _Can_ a pack have two Patriarchs? Biologically speaking? He vows to look into it.

Charles had called Aiden a natural-born leader. Marlon doesn’t think that is true. He thinks that goes for none of the people at this table. Sure, personality is part of it. Some people are just headstrong and have the drive to take action or speak up when nobody else does. But looking back in their family history Alphas of Marlon’s bloodline have often become Patriarchs. It's not a coincidence. Packrunners try to raise all their kits to be able to handle a leadership position. But people like Aiden and Marlon have a huge advantage. The actual leaders take great interest in their upbringing so they get taught by the most experienced leaders and don’t have to figure things out by themselves. Same goes for the Conservatives, Primals and Progs by this table. All people with close connections to leadership growing up, basically chosen since birth to be Mains, Patriarchs, corporate leaders and so on. Along the walls there are some people who've risen without that privilege. They make more mistakes, not due to incompetence but because Marlon and his peers got to do all those mistakes in their kithood or Juvies.

Aiden goes beyond just being raised for it, though. His personality makes everyone by the table feel seen and heard, inspiring people to listen even when their opinions are completely opposite. That's something Marlon doesn't have. He's too caustic. Gets too angry when people brush him off.

* * *

"Your gunshot wound is healing up nicely," Carter remarks as they stroll through the village market. The people living here are aware that the army is camped outside but they don't know that the governor of the village―a Conservative aristocrat whose name was on the list―is now dead, the body buried and head put on a pike outside of the gazebo on his estate. Marlon adjusts the star on his chest and puts his hands behind his back again. He's in his parade uniform and so is Carter, but for some reason, Carter has chosen to wear the uniform of someone with the rank just below Marlon. Marlon is back at playing to be James Carhartt for the benefit of the townspeople. The assassinations had been greenlit but had to be discreetly executed. The initial problem still stood - most on the list had gone underground and only the most stupid or arrogant stood to be found. Meanwhile, time is ticking and Packrunners and rebels are dying and losing territory.

"Mh. I found it amusing how Charles nearly chased Amara from the pack because of my injury when he before that has refused to believe me."

"Oh? But it wasn't her."

"No. She's done a complete turn and has been pushing for Charles and me to get closer."

"Not surprising. She only has her own good in mind and I have my suspicions about Leoh's death. I've understood that Patriarchs and Mains will feel a compulsion for physical intimacy with all members in such a small pack as yours?"

That sentence holds more horror than Marlon has words to describe. They are down to eight members. It was a long time ago since they were this few.

"Indeed. I want her chased out of the pack no matter what but Jed asked me a question that has me hesitant to push the matter."

"By all means, tell me that, but don't tell me what the question was," Carter says dryly.

Marlon smirks. He side-eyes Carter with humour. In his eyes, Carter has become even more striking these last couple of months. He's got a newly healed burn on his shoulder and neck and four parallel scars from his ear towards his nose. He would have lost his eye if Marlon hadn't been so mistrusting. The whole 'keep your enemy close' thing has made so they've ended up being each other's lifeguards. But the scratch marks on Carter's face―scars that make him less attractive in the eyes of Progs and aristocrats―make him all the more stunning to Marlon. "He asked who would nurse my kitling if Charles dies giving birth. As much as I abhor the idea of Amara being anywhere near my kits should I be blessed by any, she's the only female in the pack."

"I should think the answer would be obvious?" Carter says. "Naturally, Miss Naomi would nurse any kit in the household. That's something servants do. And I don't see how you’d be opposed to that seeing as she's your lover."

Marlon nearly misses a step. "How on Earth did you come to that conclusion? Did she say we are lovers?" He can't imagine her doing that but you never know. Or maybe Charles made the claim? Charles doesn’t like that Marlon holds affection for Naomi.

Carter chuckles and stops by a stall to inspect some pottery. "She certainly did not. You're handling it very discreetly. Discreetly enough for Mr. Bonnivier to tell me to handle our disgraceful affair the same way."

"We're not having an affair. I've noticed that you give the appearance of it and it's ruining your reputation amongst your peers. Why?"

Carter loses interested in the pottery and moves on, giving Marlon an amused look. "I told you a long time ago, my life is over the moment the war is. At the current point of time, I stand more to gain by impressing your peers than my own."

Marlon hums. "Miss Naomi and I aren't lovers," he says, returning to the previous topic. "Whoever told you we are, is lying."

"Nobody told me. But Naomi alluded to that you've seen her naked, you are 100% comfortable with having her on your property despite her being a Conservative, your mate shows great jealousy towards her and you two have a strong friendship bond despite rarely being seen interacting directly."

Marlon snorts. "I undressed Naomi to care for the wounds she acquired trying to save the life of my daughter." Marlon smells the sting of anger from Carter. "She was dying and she refused to let anyone else do it. I stepped up to fill the role of her Alpha while she was in that state and she accepted that. I assure you, I would not disregard her modesty for anything less than a life-threatening situation unless she made it understood that she'd wish otherwise." Carter's anger fades. "Furthermore," Marlon goes on and steps to the side to let a carriage pass, "the strong bond and my comfort with her can be explained by the deal I made with her when she was assigned to us. She's regularly siphoning me."

Carter gasps and loses his composure. "You're forcing her to siphon you?" he exclaims in shock.

"Nonsense. I'm not forcing her. I told her that if she didn't want to do it she could return to those who sent her and tell them she was refused entry to our home. The deal does not demand that I get to siphon her back and she only has to do it if we've been apart for a while and as long as she wishes to remain on our property." Carter smells anxious and uncomfortable, he draws breath as if to say something but changes his mind so Marlon goes on. “I’m well aware of the virtues a Conservative Omega is expected to possess. I do not wish to lead her astray from the path she’s chosen. This requirement lets us meet halfway where our cultures clash. I was well aware that a bond with all likeliness would form. The friendship bond would make her less likely to betray us. In addition, other pack members would be less likely to exclude her from social interaction as well as the act of siphoning me lends her a measure of comfort in these dark times. The assumption that we are lovers worries me since I do not wish to besmirch her honour in the eyes of potential mates that could make her happy. To my knowledge, a friendship bond between an Alpha and Omega isn’t frowned upon even at our level?” 'Our', as in James Carhhartt and Carter Wadsworth's level of the aristocracy.

“It isn’t. Have you never asked anything more untoward of her?”

Marlon thinks before he answers. “I have. Make note of the word ‘ask’, though. I was very particular about letting it be known that she had a choice and it would come with no repercussions to decline. It was before you gave me the suppressants. I asked her to sit on my lap while I was in a Rut to put some pressure on my erection. I was clear on the fact that I would take some sexual gratification from it but also that it wasn’t a prelude to trying to do more than just have her sitting there leaned against my shoulder. I lied because I put one hand against her knee to keep her in place but we were both fully clothed. In fact, I would say that the scene I walked in on when my mate was straddling you, was similar in its nature. Barring the assumption that you’re telling the truth and Charles did not ask for your consent beforehand.”

Carter chuckles and they both start strolling again. “You know, James, you make a better Conservative than I do. You also put the bar for what constitutes as ‘untowards’ much higher than I do. I would not find Naomi’s reputation to be tarnished even if you’d exchanged handjobs. She’s a fine Omega in every way and you know as well as I do that on our level, discretion is the key, not abstention.”

"Fair. But I must warn you. If your intention is to court her for a mateship, the injuries she sustained protecting our kits might have left her barren. Personally, I wouldn't see it as a disqualifier but you only take one mate for life so the sacrifice would be greater."

"I never said anything about mating her."

"You bid me observe, so I have. I've seen how you look at her."

Carter huffs and smiles without humour, looking away. "I've told you, James. After the war, I will have nothing to offer a mate."

Marlon keeps the annoyance off his face. "With beauty such as yours, nothing else is necessary."

Carter chuckles pleasantly. "I don't think I've ever met anyone as obsessed with my looks as you. Sometimes I wonder if you wish to throw acid in my face."

Marlon harrumphs at the insult. "I do not envy you your beauty. I mind how it affects everyone around you, including me. I'm angered that I cannot own you."

Carter hums. "Such a poignant wording." They stroll in silence for a while. Marlon stops briefly to buy a roll of satin in a vibrant colour. He doesn't know what to do with the fabric now when he dresses in combat gear or suits befitting a gentleman but the peacock in him never died. "Very well," Carter says suddenly when they start moving again. "Then you shall. I offer myself as your slave for 24 hours. Your power over me will be absolute. I'll do anything you tell me and you can do whatever you want to me."

A surge of excitement goes through Marlon. That's not what he'd meant. He'd meant a pack bond. That would ensure it would be very hard for Carter to betray them and Marlon would be free to explore the potential friendship that's been building between them as a consequence of guarding each other so suspiciously. This would be so much better and so much worse. Worse, because Finn's comic books spring to mind. It's too easy to imagine Carter bound, red welts on his buttocks, locked onto Marlon's knot by either mouth or ass. It's worse because the idea makes Marlon aroused yet it would put consent to the question. Marlon barely cares since he isn't likely to get an opportunity like this again ever in his life. For a beat, he wonders why he suddenly desires Carter sexually when he hasn't before. But then he admits to himself that the desire has been there for at least a month. All those evenings spent talking in front of the fireplace, fighting side by side, Carter's pretence of a clandestine affair that comes with badly hidden affectionate touches, Carter's friendship bonds with others in the pack; it's all resulted in a growing physical attraction.

The two conflicting lessons about consent from his kithood war inside of him. Michael refusing to knot Arvid because Arvid was a prisoner and Arvid getting mad about the reason for the refusal. Marlon turns to face Carter who stops. "That sounds foolish. What if what I want is to chain you up and whip you until death?"

"Then I'll bite my tongue, inwardly curse my folly and accept my self-inflicted death."

Marlon withholds a disappointed sigh. This is a matter of Michael's view of consent then. Besides, it would have been cheating. Carter isn't on Marlon's pre-approved list of lovers. He shamefully admits to himself that he would have done it anyway. He's happy with Charles but there are parts missing and he's more and more reluctant to admit it. It isn't even about sex. Aiden knows. He keeps introducing Marlon and Charles to potential mates to join them and help smooth out the wrinkles, so to speak. But alas, the pair's divergent attraction that had seemed so practical at first, prevents easily finding matching mates.

Marlon spots a stall with jewelry and saunters over. "These are exquisite," he tells the seller.

"Thank you, Sir. I make them myself," she answers with a smile.

They are bracelets, necklaces, brooches and all kinds of jewelry in gold and gemstones. The O has guards by her stall and a lid of glass over her wares. Marlon can't see what he'd like to buy, though. "Tell me, do you have any of these in larger sizes? My mate is male."

"Naturally, Sir." She takes up a box from under the table. "We don't sell many of these since our packs mysterious disappearance. Packrunning Alphas are very appreciative of my art. I know they're a bit rough around the edges but they spent a lot of money on my wares so I worry about them."

"Mysterious disappearance?"

"One night there was a disturbance on both territories and in the morning they were gone. Someone said they'd been arrested for illegal activities but I can't imagine what it would be. Sure, little miss Joseph was a rascal, but _all_ of them? Surely, it can't be right. They always helped the farmers get the harvest in on time, cleared the roads after storms and snow, and were decent and helpful people, heathens or not."

Marlon hums noncommittally. "Strange indeed."

He ends up buying everything in the box and hands the box over to Carter for him to carry. "I don't wish to be a downer," Carter says, "but I don't think Chuck would wear any of these.”

“Neither do I,” Marlon agrees and stops by another merchant to buy a couple of large, brightly coloured silk shawls with gold embroidery and fringes. “These people, they don’t know what’s going on,” Marlon remarks as they continue. It’s quite frightening. Packs are dying and potential allies are completely unaware.

“No. That’s how Coombs prefers it. The man we just did away with never went astray from his counsel like many others have. If he had, he’d quickly found his village turned against him. These people were very appreciative of their village packs unlike the next village over. And here they only have one newspaper and one radio channel. All media is controlled. The packs barely saw it coming.”

Marlon side-eyes Carter warily but says nothing. Next he stops by a leatherworker to buy an intricately worked belt. Lastly he stops by in an actual store to buy the most advanced camera he can find. Satisfied, knowing he has the last item he needs on his person already, they return to their horses. Carter had insisted Marlon ride his mare, Ice. It’s another act for the audience to mark Marlon’s rank as higher than his during this mission. The aristocrats saw some kind of symbolism in riding white horses. They ride back to the estate that lies isolated on a vast property outside of the village. Their soldiers are camped between the estate and the village and all wear the star no matter their designation - a ruse to make it harder for those in the know to separate friend from foe. When they get closer they can smell the large pyre on the back of the estate. The servants had been either captured or killed depending on their level of resistance. It’s those who were killed who are currently burning. Their target had no mate and his son was grown and no longer living on the estate. The three servant-kits that had been orphaned had promptly been adopted by soldiers belonging to one pack who’d lost their own kits. The other captives are being decently treated to be released later in another state to delay the discovery of the assassination. Once they’re inside, Marlon orders the soldiers assigned guard duty on the estate not to bother him and Carter unless there’s an emergency. He chooses one floor in the west wing for him and Carter and finds a large sitting room for them. “Go find us something to drink,” he tells Carter then lights the fireplace for ambiance. He drapes his roll of satin cloth over a divan and arranges two armchairs with a small table between, for them to sit on, then makes other preparations, lining up what he’s bought on the floor beside one of the armchairs. 

Carter comes back, pours them a glass each of a fine cognac and puts the decanter on the table. Marlon clinks his glass together when he’s handed his drink and tracks Carter’s mouth and the movement of his throat as they both drink the glasses dry. Marlon refills their glasses. “Now take off your clothes,” Marlon says.

Carter’s eyebrows raise in question.

“You told me I could own you and do whatever I want to you. I still have 22 hours and 14 minutes.”

“I wasn’t aware you accepted the offer.”

“I did. Are you reneging on your word?”

“Of course not.” Carter only hesitates for a fraction of a moment before he takes another sip of his drink, puts the glass down and reaches up to start unbuttoning his coat of arms. “Should I make a show of it?”

Marlon shakes his head. “You can put the clothes over there. Just get naked.”

Carter nods and moves to obey. He’s starting to smell anxious but it doesn’t show in his face or posture. Marlon waits sitting down on an armchair until Carter comes to stand in front of him with his hands behind his back. “Now what?”

“I’m going to touch you.”

“That’s understood. I meant, what do you want from me?”

Marlon chuckles and shakes his head. “Just stand there.” He takes up the belt he’d bought from the floor and puts it around Carter’s waist. Next comes one of the shawls. He folds it to a large triangle, pulls it between Carter’s legs and up to the juncture between leg and crotch, trying to touch Carter’s intimate parts as little as possible. He secures it on the belt where it rests on Carter’s hip and repeats the process with another shawl on the other site, creating something akin to slitted chaps. He uses the last two shawls to wrap around Carter’s hips so his lower body is covered. Carter’s anxiety is slowly traded for perplexity as he curiously follows Marlon’s every move. “Are you cold?” Marlon asks. It isn’t cold in the room and daylight filters in through the heavy curtains, but Carter is next to naked.

“No, Sir. Should I be calling you ‘Sir’?”

“James is fine. Feel free to speak and drink as you please.”

Carter huffs in awkward amusement. “I don’t know what to talk about. I have no precedence for this situation.”

Marlon hums and reaches for the box of assorted jewelry designed for male bodies. “I don’t really care what we talk about. My one desire is that you only speak with honesty. If you can’t tell the truth then keep quiet.” He takes a bicep cuff out of the box. It’s an intricate piece in the likeness of a vine with flowers. There’s another one in the box with a hummingbird and a flower vine. “Charles would never wear jewelry such as this. Personally, I adore it. When I was younger and still hadn’t switched to a clothing style that fit with the Conservative business ideal I would have been utterly delighted to find something like this in a store. I would have worn it on a daily basis,” he says and gently puts the cuff onto Carter’s upper arm. “I suppose it’s a bit too garish for your taste?”

“I―” Carter quiets down and purses his lips as Marlon puts on the second cuff with the hummingbird. He lifts his arm to admire the way the small stones catch the light. "In my eyes this is jewelry for an O. It is gaudy, looking through the lens of the bias in which I was raised. But the craftsmanship is superb and I'm amazed that it could be found on a village market… Trying hard to see it from a Primal perspective I can see a certain appeal. But then I imagine wearing it in public and my mind recoils at all the attention that it would draw."

"I like attention," Marlon says and rifles through the box for more jewelry that will flatter Carter. "It's called peacocking. Our Os choose their mates and hookups on their personal merits; fitness, intelligence, craftiness. Not personal riches. But wearing eye-catching clothes and jewelry gives you a head start while in a company of equals or betters. If I stand with Jed, Aiden, and Sean I will still stand out and get a chance to prove myself as the superior choice that I might otherwise not have been afforded in that company. And Packrunners idealize diversity rather than conformity."

"And yet you wear the same clothes as them." Carter takes his drink to sip while Marlon puts bracelets on his other wrist.

"I'm currently wearing a star over my heart so my clothing is irrelevant. On that note, does Coombs make you pray and recite scripture while he fucks you?"

Carter inhales sharply then coughs Cognac through his nose. Marlon withholds a smirk while he waits for Carter to collect himself. "Light!" Carter finally says. "He made you do that?"

Marlon nods.

"He's never asked me to. If he had, I would have refused. I'm not a pious man but I still wouldn't risk angering a god by that level of blasphemy."

"What if that's what I want from you?"

Carter swallows audibly before standing tall with an expression of resolve. "Then I must ask for some guidance. I don't know the scripture by heart except for some parts."

Marlon hums and stands up to try out a necklace on Carter. "It's interesting to hear you say _a_ god, just like you mentioned your truemates in plural. Would you expand on your beliefs to me?"

"It's absurd to think everyone has just one Truemate. Especially considering how Packrunners are sometimes seen to have several and yet people have been known to change designation. Would converting to become a Conservative suddenly unmake the trueness of a previous bond? I think not. In conclusion, I believe there are several truemates for each of us out there and the question is if we meet them and what we do then. I don't want to meet any of mine because I prefer to keep my mind clear and know my feelings are caused by personal chemistry rather than scent. Just look at you and Chuck. Hadn't it been for scent attraction I don't think either of you would have given each other the time of day. And yet you repeatedly hurt each other in your desperation to make it work."

"I asked for honesty," Marlon mutters to himself and changes the necklace for another. "I'm struggling with PTSD, as you yourself told me. I have issues and I'm not easy to get along with."

"I beg to differ. You have proclaimed that you see us as enemies and yet you are honest and vulnerable in front of me. Anytime we've been in a confrontational situation your first choice has always been to withdraw and avoid it coming to violence. That's including the first time we met and you _had_ to resort to violence in the capacity of a superior officer. I've seen you choose what's best for your loved ones before your own gain several times. You are not a difficult man to be mated to should one be ready to meet you halfway. If anything, the difficult part would be to help you deal with your psychological issues."

"This conversation is making me uncomfortable."

"Which demonstrates my point. You tell me that without brushing me aside and showing me hostility. If you were my O, or the other way around by all means, it'd still leave us with the opportunity to resolve our issues."

"Perhaps. So tell me, you believe in several gods?" Marlon evades and continues to bedeck Carter with jewelry - ankles, wrists, midriff.

"I do. I am not a pious man, as I said. But I choose to follow the Light because when push comes to shove, I like the general code of conduct of my designation. Call me a lenient if you wish. In my social class I'm a disgrace, but not amongst the majority of Conservatives. Primals are too basic. Not all of them, naturally. But just like you, I like refinement and orderly interactions. I like to save my basic expressiveness for situations of great emotion and privacy."

"You assume I like the Conservative order of conduct?"

"I've been watching you like a hawk for months. You snap into our way of comporting ourselves without a thought but you sometimes need hours to readapt to Primal comportment. So yes. I assume."

It isn't even a lie. Marlon changes the subject. "Can you pelt?" he asks. Carter smells anxious and seems to deliberate what to say. "Were you born naked or with fur?" Marlon asks instead.

Carter blushes hotly but doesn't answer.

"With fur then," Marlon surmises. "No Primal would feel ashamed of it, but you do."

"Pelting is a death sentence in this day and age. I was born a red tabby. But I can't pelt. I've never learned how to." He hesitates. "Is that something you want from me? I can try if you demand it."

Marlon shakes his head. "No. Just curiosity. You remember the fur coat we found when we searched this house?"

"The priceless snowtiger that you ordered salted and burned?"

"That's the one. It wasn't snowtiger, it was human."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. There were no seams to fit the arms to the body of the coat. The fur was skinned off someone human-shaped. I'm sure I would make a pretty good coat too, if not nearly as thick," Marlon jokes.

Carter is uneasy. "Can I…?"

"See? Naturally." Marlon pelts and lets his fur grow as long and thick as he can make it. "The hot and prickly feeling you get when you drop fangs? Just say yes to it. In the beginning it helps to look in the mirror and drop fangs at the same time. Your fur will be short and perhaps only partial the first couple of times and get longer the more times you do it. When you start getting really adept you will be able to do partial pelting on small areas." He withdraws his fur and then only pelts on the back of his hand to demonstrate. "As for why? Warmth is a prime reason. You can pelt under your clothes and nobody needs to know. It also makes for another layer for knives and claws to penetrate. And I sometimes pelt on my back only to raise my hackles if growling alone doesn't get the message through."

"I guess it has its advantages," Carter concedes. He still seems a bit uneasy.

"Would you be put off if I wanted to have sex with you while pelted?"

"I… I don't know." Marlon gives Carter a stern look. Carter huffs. "I am not being evasive. I don't know. I think I would be able to perform without skunking but we'd be going against a lifetime of taboo and prejudice. I promised you absolute power over me so I'll do my best not to let it show if I get put off."

Marlon shakes his head. "That's not an attitude I want from any lover under any circumstances. Again, it was a question born out of curiosity, not a request." He takes something out of his pocket. "Now, stand still. I'm going to draw a line of kohl under your eyes and apply mascara on your eyelashes."

Carter seems puzzled but keeps still. Marlon steps away to regard his handiwork. Carter's so beautiful it makes Marlon's mouth dry. He picks up his drink to sip while he drinks Carter in with his eyes. "You're gorgeous. Astoundingly so. Can you flare for me? Thank you. Utter perfection. Why do you smell anxious?"

"I feel exposed. I'm a bit apprehensive about what will happen now."

Marlon smiles. "I bought a camera to try to capture your beauty. I will take pictures of you. If you're afraid that I seek to degrade or harm you, you can relax. You have never been, and will never again be as safe as you are during these hours you let me own you. I won't let you get out of the photoshoot. Aside from that I have but two requirements. You can't leave my vicinity lest I order you to, and you have to be completely honest with me. You may refrain from answering me but you can't lie."

"Will you show these pictures to anyone?"

"If I manage to catch what I see in you on a picture, I would want to frame it and hang it on the wall. But I can't, now can I? Not without permission. You only gave me 24 to own you, after all. I will regard the pictures as enhancement of my memory, not blackmail material. I won't touch you in any way I wouldn't feel entitled to do under normal circumstances, hence why your honesty is so vital."

At first, while Marlon instructs Carter to lay on the divan and directs him to pose, Carter is tense and awkward and refills his glass several times. But Marlon keeps talking about nothings and Carter relaxes.

Marlon finds himself getting aroused. The moment Carter can smell that he relaxes further and starts getting flirty, ignoring the camera. He’s tipsy now, with reddened cheeks and chest, wearing a sultry, lopsided smirk, canines slowly elongating.

“If we were to box with official rules in place, you would beat me,” Marlon tells him and comes close to snap a picture from a low angle while Carter looks down at him from a sitting position.

“If we were to fight one-on-one with no rules, you’d win,” Carter deadpans, reflecting the compliment right back.

“I wasn’t schooled to follow rules. My aunt and uncle trained me as a kit, with murder in mind. I made my first kill when I was almost captured by two snatchers walking through the slums as a kit. Later on, I made friends with the Hales, and helped Laurent do his circuits to alleviate boredom and feel useful.”

“Snatchers…” Carter bites his lip thinking. “They’re the ones who catch kits for slavery?”

“Indeed,” Marlon answers darkly.

“I can give you a list of names of people profiteering of illegal kit labour if you want? Some names you already have on your hit list, but others you can find amongst our allies.”

“I’d be grateful. I’ve already secured a deal with the Hales making sure any Snatcher caught trying to hunt their territory will get their due. But there’s only so much they can do. And the slums have a lot of orphans. Some will still find the payout worth the risk of getting caught.” He lowers the camera, tracking the glistening secretion from Carter’s ear glands slowly working its way down his throat. He wants to taste it but says nothing. There’s a lull of silence while Marlon follows the bob of Carter’s throat while he lifts his glass to drink and Carter watches Marlon watch him.

“Tell me, would it make you more comfortable to have me in your home if I siphoned you just like Naomi?” Carter asks when he’s put down his glass.

“A lot more comfortable. It wouldn’t make me trust you completely, but I’d feel a lot more secure.”

"Then let me do it."

Marlon hums and pulls at his lip in thought. He puts down the camera as far away on the floor as he can reach and sits down beside Carter on the divan. "Very well. You siphon me now and every time we've been apart for a longer period of time for as long as you wish to remain on our property. I won't require to siphon you back. You―" Marlon cuts himself off with a short intake of breath when Carter tips to the side and puts his mouth―open and wet―right on Marlon's throat and tongues upward to lave at the gland behind the ear in the Primal equivalent of a deep kiss. Marlon shivers, gets goosebumps, and lets out a warbly breath. His voice is rough when he speaks. "I was going to say that you don't have to siphon straight from the source."

Carter pulls away far enough to look him in the eyes. "I apologise. I thought I was allowed."

Marlon chuckles, gaze trailing over Carter’s face. "You're definitely allowed. But you're changing it from a pure business transaction to something I'm taking pleasure out of. I thought you should be aware. You gave yourself over in my care, made your well-being my responsibility and made clear that you wouldn't utter protests if your limits were transgressed. I have no wish to violate you while you're in my care."

"James, I'm a libidinous man. I'm as attracted to you as to your brother. While he has those entrancing red eyes you have the personality traits of the ideal Alpha. I would not be opposed to making my pretense of an illicit affair with you a reality." The ideal _Conservative_ Alpha. Marlon doesn't take offense. There are a number of qualities he likes in Conservatives, just not their view of gender and relationships.

"You fuck my brother to gain power," Marlon states. Carter’s still sitting leaned in so close. His lips are glossy from the silky oil from Marlon’s neck.

"That's only a part of it. But if power was my only reason I've been fucking the wrong brother."

"He outranks me." Their scents blend so well. Marlon wants to lift his hand and rub a finger over Carter’s lower lip. He doesn’t, but his hand twitches with the impulse.

"Technically, so do I. However, titles and rank only matters if both parties accept them. And I think we both know that in the choice between risking to alienate you or your Patriarch, your brother will choose whatever keeps you by his side. I’m surprised you don’t use that to your advantage more often, to be honest,” Carter muses. Marlon’s gaze shifts to the sheen on Carter’s neck and throat. He has a strong urge to taste. “It’s funny. I’ve had the advantage of seeing the structure of a lot of packs during this war, and most of them have two linear ranks that blend into one like a zipper, putting Alphas and Omegas into the same chain of command. But you stand outside of that chain, deferring to or overruling anyone in your pack as you please. You know who else functions like that?” Carter looks at Marlon as he speaks, slowly tilting his head to offer a better view. 

“Coombs,” Marlon states.

“Mr. Coombs,” Carter agrees. “So tell me, James, if power was my only motive, should I be fucking the spider or the fly?”

“I take offense at you calling Aiden a fly.” So close. Carter has definitely come closer, hasn’t he? He must have. Marlon can taste the alcohol on his breath and feel the heat he radiates. Marlon's tipsy himself. He hasn't had as much to drink as Carter, but enough for him not to be sure if the heady feeling is caused by the proximity or intoxication.

"Bad choice of words but the comparison still stands."

"You took courses in psychology at West Point, no?"

"I did. Two courses. Basic psychology, and a continuation that focused on the trauma induced issues in soldiers."

Marlon knew it. He's done a very thorough background check on Carter. Some things he can't check because of the war but West Point is controlled by the rebels. Carter's grades are average or slightly above in everything but psychology where he peaks. It's not mandatory courses but ones he'd chosen by himself.

Marlon offers his neck to Carter, closes his eyes and shivers when Carter puts his mouth to his skin.

How did it come to this? How did he go from ‘Ew, no,’ when Carter offered himself while Marlon was in Rut and suffering at his worst, to this level of desire? The current dynamics can only be a small part of it. The arrogant playboy Carter was when they first met could never have gotten him here. But clearly, Carter's patient manipulation could. After all, Aiden takes Carter to bed on a regular basis. Aiden, who doesn't normally do repeat performances.

Carter's skin feels hot under Marlon's fingertips, his hands demanding as they cup the back of Marlon's skull and wind around his midriff. Marlon likes to say he has no memory of reaching out to gently hold on to Carter in a silent request for him to keep kissing and licking, but it would be a lie. He nuzzles Carter, drags his nose up and down below his ear until the tip of his nose is coated with silky secretion and his nostrils filled with Carter's scent. "You are supposed to siphon," he reminds Carter.

"Right, right," Carter huffs, flustered as he pulls away. He starts siphoning. "Wow. You're lying about how much that gunshot wound bothers you."

Marlon chuckles. "I'm not. The pain is down to regular levels of discomfort. We Primals are brutes, remember? I almost always have bruises or injuries from brief scuffles."

"I thought you backed off when someone growled at you, that you mostly postured?"

"Tell Aiden that," Marlon deadpans.

Carter laughs. "Point." He leans back to suck at the gland behind Marlon's ear then siphon again. Suddenly he starts smelling of distress and fear. 

Marlon pulls him close to hold him, purring soothingly. "Hey, hey. It's okay. Is it the first time you siphon anyone?"

"Yes," Carter answers unsteadily.

The thought is mind-blowing. A 7 year old who's never siphoned. But then Marlon remembers that Conservatives only siphon their mates and perhaps really close friends. "What you're experiencing right now is a siphon high. It's natural and will fade soon enough after you stop siphoning." It still begs the question why it hit so fast and why as soon as it did every gland on Carter's body went into overdrive. Marlon's too, in response. "Look at it as a free drug you can't get addicted to and can't overdose on."

Carter shifts to straddle Marlon, removes the two shawls covering his crotch and looks down. "Is this normal? I was turned on before, but not like this..." he says and looks down at his erection.

Marlon smirks, grabs Carter's hand and pulls it to press against his erection briefly to demonstrate that he too is affected. He removes Carter's hand before letting go. "Perfectly normal."

"Are you dissociating?"

Marlon shakes his head. 

"Does Naomi also get turned on by siphoning you?"

"Rarely. If either of us are, we pretend not to notice. But her siphoning is never preluded by flirting or sexual allusions like what has gone on between us today. Behavior decides the effect to a great degree. If you'd siphon a complete stranger at first meeting it would take a lot longer for the high to kick in. And if you siphon someone unconscious to gauge their health, chances are it won't kick in at all." Most of this in simplified form was taught in school. But who knows what the Conservative aristocrats taught their kits?

Carter siphons twice as if trying it out. He relaxes, distress finally dissipating, and leans in to suck at Marlon's gland again. He siphons, then repeats. Marlon's breath goes rougher. He wraps his arms around Carter's waist feeling how Carter goes more and more lax. Carter pushes Marlon's face against his neck. "Give a little," he pleads.

Marlon doesn't need much encouragement. It quickly turns into a make out session. Marlon sucks, licks, drags blunted fangs along the skin. His hands roam where they can reach, discovering the dips and hills of Carter's body the way his eyes had while he was taking photos. Secretion that looks oily, feels silky to the touch, reacts in a way akin to cotton candy when it comes into contact with saliva. It sort of dissolves in your mouth, enzymes igniting reactions that release endorphins and oxytocin along with a wide range of other chemicals. Progs find the idea of sucking on someone's glands a bit off-putting, imagining it will be like getting olive oil in your mouth. It's not. On a molecular level it's like puzzle pieces slotting together becoming one with what your body interprets as you. It's the same with scent. The scent receptors used for siphoning also read the tiny particles in the air and if it catches matches it releases smaller doses of the same feel-good and bonding chemicals. During bonding sex when both/all parties siphon each other you temporarily lose the ability to discern who’s scent is whose because of this. For a moment in time you literally become one, inside out. The only part of biology that's interesting.

Carter kisses his way along Marlon's jaw until he reaches the mouth. They kiss, unrushedly tasting each other's tongues. Carter unbuttons Marlon's coat and shirt, parts them to get his hands inside, fingers rubbing over Marlon’s nipples. His mouth trails back to lick at the gland, siphon, and back again to kiss. “I usually don’t like kissing all that much. Now, it’s like I can’t stop,” he murmurs, smiling against Marlon’s lips. Which would have been fantastic news if Carter hadn’t given himself over to Marlon as a slave, heaping over all responsibility of guarding his integrity on Marlon. And Marlon had told him he’s never been safer than he is right now. If he lets this run its course he’d make a lie of that. He himself isn’t siphoning but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t recognise what’s going on as clearly as he was blind to it with Finn. Just to test it out, he bares his fangs and growls a low level challenge. Carter pulls away far enough to look him in the eyes, eyelids heavy and eyes drowsy and puzzled. “Mrrt? Are you dissociating right now?”

Marlon hiccups a small laugh and grinning shakes his head. “Not even a little.”

“If you said yes I’d be confused. I’ve never been so sure if someone wants me or not as I am now.”

Marlon smirks. “I should say. Since you’re shooting my arousal straight into your bloodstream.” He kisses Carter until Carter’s back under the spell, then he growls the same amicable threat, squeezing Carter’s buttocks at the same time.

This time he gets the reaction he’s expecting. Carter tips to the side, twisting to present his ass over Marlon’s lap. He looks over his shoulder, so darn lax and siphon high. “You’ve got lube?”

“Don’t need it.” Marlon milks his own ear gland to coat his fingers with secretion, then uses the lubricated fingers to tease Carter’s hole. Carter whines and purrs encouragingly. Marlon milks his gland again and this time his finger breaches Carter’s ass. While he works on prepping his mind is furiously at work debating with itself. Honour versus gain. Who he wants to be versus the good of the pack. He remembers the first lesson he ever got in pack bonding, explained to him by his dad. His dad had drawn a triangle, written ‘instinct’ inside of it then ‘natural chemistry’, ‘feelings’, and ‘ **BEHAVIOUR** ’ at the three points. Marlon remembers asking why ‘behaviour’ was so much bigger than the other points. His dad had told him that in a pack you sometimes had to bond with people you don’t like and don’t match with chemically and then behaving in the right way would override the importance of the other two points. Back then he’d been far too young to understand. But his catastrophic mistake with Finn had hammered home the lesson. “How would you like to join us? Become Carter Williams? Or Carter Wadsworth of the Williams pack, by all means.” he asks.

“No… I mean this as no offense, but Packrunning isn’t for me. I have no trouble accepting your culture, but adopting it is another matter,” Carter mumbles drowsily.

And that settles it. If Marlon didn’t own Carter right now he wouldn’t have given a shit. He’d have fucked Carter―siphoned him and have him siphon back, because in this state Carter wouldn’t say no―and let Carter take the consequences of unwittingly triggering the bonding sex that would cause a pack bond. Carter wouldn’t understand what the bond was straight away. He’d simply feel more like they belonged together. Then when they got back Jed would take one whiff of Carter’s new, unsteady bond and seduce the libidinous Conservative to cement the bond. Then Carter would toil under the same compulsion as Marlon had in regards to Finn. But he can’t do that while Carter is property. Jed and Aiden will probably be mad at him for not going through with it. “Why did you give yourself to me to be owned?” He milks his gland some more and this time inserts two fingers. He should stop. It's not just their own behavior that triggered the pack bonding chemicals. Aiden never takes regular lovers but he's been taking Carter to bed almost every night. Carter has a strong friendship bond with him and faint friendship bonds to two more pack members. He has no dominant bonds like a pack bond or mating bond to protect him. Mutual siphoning isn't necessary under the circumstances.

"To gain your trust. Even saving your life didn't do the trick. You just repaid the favor. _Shit_ , right there." Carter keens a purr when Marlon's crooked fingers finally finds the sweet spot.

"Mhh," Marlon hums and caresses Carter's back with his free hand. "I do trust you, to an extent. I've been very open to you about my issues and the help you've given me does a lot to keep me together. I no longer think you will shoot me in the back. But you are a professional companion, and a good one to boot." Marlon grips Carter's neck in a mimicry of a bite. He's had paranoid suspicions about Carter for a while now. "And you must understand that I can never trust you as long as you are in continuous contact with Coombs," he hedges, giving into his paranoia. His nose is instantly assaulted by sour fear. Carter’s always waved off any accusations but he’s never been drunk _and_ high the way he is now or the statement might not have scared him. "What? You didn't think I knew?" He hadn't. In fact, up until Carter was frightened by the statement he'd been convinced he was jumping at shadows. "Of course, I know,” he lies. “Here’s the thing, though. Sean won two medals from the Union while undercover. When I was undercover only my handler and Aiden knew. That means you could be playing one of three sides and nobody can corroborate your story.”

“Three sides?”

“Coombs’, ours, or your own.”

“Have you told Aiden?”

“No. You’re still living and breathing, aren’t you? Believe me, Coombs is a touchy subject for him.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I told you, right now you’re safer that you’ve ever been in your life. I take care of those who belong to me.”

“And after?”

“Same as before. I’ll be keeping an eye on you until I’ve figured out whose side you’re really playing for. Frankly, I’m surprised nobody else had figured it out. You’ve been dropping tells all over the place.”

“Have not.”

Carter sounds so petulant about it that it startles a genuine laugh out of Marlon. He manhandles Carter to get out from underneath him and then lays down on his side beside Carter so he can look at his face. Carter's tense. He smells distressed and anxious but no longer terrified. Marlon purrs a calming all-is-well, caresses his back with one hand and supports his own head with his other. "It's small things. How you never correct me when I talk about Coombs and ask questions about your relation in present tense. How you know just a little bit more of what the other side is doing, than you rightfully should if you were cut off from inside sources. And then there’s that detail of how any raid or attack you lead, always takes a bit fewer losses and is always successful. And remember, in Selma? You gave an on surface-level strange order to search those sheds where we found the three captive writers. I didn’t remark on the strangeness but there was no reason to search those sheds unless you already knew you’d find something there. Hence, you have an informant you're not telling us about. Also, your pervasive insistence that your life is over after the war.”

Carter turns his head to face Marlon, eyes fearful. "How is that a giveaway?"

"Because it's only true if we lose. You know you'll be richly rewarded if you wish when we win. But if you're working for the other side you won't believe we'll win. If you work for the government you'll also be awarded. But you're not. You're working for Coombs. As you've pointed out, he's a spider manipulating threads rather than a powerhouse unto himself. So he might be able to convince them you were working for him, but they'll still see him as a cripple, equal body to mind. So if they'd let you live you would still be regarded with suspicion, a pariah. You'd be forced to a life as Coombs' companion or a life as a simple man." Marlon pets Carter's hair. "Life as Coombs' companion isn't a bad life. You'd have all the comforts of your social class, intelligent company, books to read, regular sex. And I'm sure Coombs would enjoy watching you poke in the garden."

"He does," Carter concedes. 

"The best thing is, even if you don't win, if you just keep your head down and avoid detection, you'd be safe. Too bad you didn't manage to fly under the radar, huh?"

"What are you going to do to me?" Carter asks again.

"Nothing, unless I catch you betraying us. This far I haven't. I have my suspicions about a few incidents and a few arrests that have been made, but they're inconsequential enough to ignore if your actions are mostly in favour of our cause. I hate that I don't know if anything you've told me about yourself is true, though. Care to tell me who you are? Carter the man, not Carter the actor?”

Carter snorts in humourless amusement and inches closer, entwining their legs. “I used to think you were an eerily good liar until I figured out what your trick was and started emulating it,” he says. “Anytime I told you an outright lie you’d be even more suspicious and hostile than usual, as if you could smell it. I know you couldn’t, but you still noticed when I lied. So I stopped. Just like you, I lied by omission. Most things I’ve told you about myself are true. I just skipped out on other parts. Like when I was sent to war. I was terrified. But I was also angry and bitter. Coombs got in touch pretty soon after. He was heartbroken about you and begged my forgiveness, telling me he’d done wrong to throw me out. I felt both vindictive and bitter about it. But at the same time it felt good to have someone tell me they’d done me wrong. That’s more than my parents have ever done. And Coombs has contacts. He could pull strings to get me off the battlefield. Not right then, because we were deep in the heart of enemy territory, but if I could get myself moved to the forests closer to the US border, he could bring me home. So I played at being understanding and forgiving. We started exchanging letters and we would call each other when it was possible.” Carter pauses and closes his eyes. Marlon leans his head to purr his all-is-well straight unto the skin of his shoulder and caress his back. Carter goes on. “At the same time I saw heated combat daily. Every day was a challenge just to stay alive. I was lucky one day. My actions saved the lives of three soldiers under my command and when we got to safety one of them asked what pack I ran in.”

Marlon whistles impressed. “You must have shown some significant valor. We know who the West Point boys are so your actions must have made him think he’d gotten the wrong information about you.”

Carter sniggers. “Yes. When I told him I was a Conservative he looked at me dubiously and asked me if I was sure.” Marlon and Carter share a grin. “I mentioned this when I was in the officer’s mass, eating. One of my peers called it an insult, but the Packrunning officers reacted like you, telling me he’d been complimenting me. Not many days later General Hartley was in camp and she called me to her tent just to tell me she’d heard good things about me and bid me to keep up the good work because she’d be keeping her eyes on me for a possible promotion. The rest I told you was true. I kept your warning in mind and cared for my men like I said. Their respect and admiration for my actions got to me and I felt very protective of that."

"The letters from your parents. Were they real?"

"Oh yes. They've never failed to make me feel inadequate."

"Coombs' letters?"

"Burned."

"Does he ever talk about me?”

Carter utters a short, pained laugh. “Is that why you’ve let me live? Why you haven’t take actions to see me in the gallows?”

Marlon doesn’t answer.

“You’re very alike, in a way,” Carter says. “Aside from your physique being top shape and him being a cripple. You’re both unscrupulous and think any sacrifice is worth it if you’re successful in reaching your goal. But there’s a major difference. He’s _lonely_. Coombs is a very lonely man and you’re not. You’ve got people who care, sometimes even more than they care for their own happiness. He doesn’t. So, yes, he talks about you. A while back when I was already staying with you he got the idea that maybe you could be swayed to join us. He ordered me to kill your mate to cut that bond. Now, since I want to live a long life in good health, I haven’t had an opportunity to do so. If he’d said to kill you, I’d have had loads of opportunities, but Chuck’s safe. A great part of that is because the times I could have done it, you would instantly have pointed a finger at me. And that loathsome sister of his guards him like a snake. It didn't get better by Leoh dying. Assassinating a Main isn't a walk in the park."

It's strange how much calmer it makes Marlon to get his suspicions confirmed. He doesn't even blame Carter.

"You know, everything was going so smoothly for me," Carter says, turning on his side so he can put his hand inside Marlon's shirt, thumbing at a nipple and letting his gaze rest on what his hand is doing. "I've been honest with you about my thoughts about Coombs. I think he's a madman and his vision of a unified society is nightmarish to me. I don't want the government to have absolute control. Coombs is convinced he's doing the people a favor in the long run so his empathy only goes as far as people in his inner circle. But if you're inside of it, he's kind and generous. I figured by aligning myself with him _and_ you, I'd stand the greatest chance to survive and get out of the influence of the arbitrary powers that would be installed no matter who wins. So everything was going as planned until I discovered that you had a Farseer on your side. A couple of talks with Phillip put all my plans to doubt. He's the sole reason I support your insane plan. I think it's as insane as any of Coombs' schemes. You say any kit that cheeps will be spared but you know better than anyone that kits from my social class are incredibly unlikely to do so. So I had to ask myself if I am willing to murder a few kits to avoid the extensive genocide that would otherwise take place no matter what side wins."

"You think it matters how we win? That the consequences will differ?"

Carter looks up to meet his gaze. "According to Phillip's friends, if you gain enough support to go through with the plan, most of the high ranking Packrunners that are there when you all kill those kits, will be so abhorred by it that they won't be gunning for revenge and will go along with the suggestion without any fuss."

"What suggestion?"

Carter scrunches up his nose. "You know, a conversation with someone beyond the veil with a grumpy Phillip as an interpreter doesn't really offer detailed information."

Marlon chuckles. "Fair. Say, how keen would you be to be an actual double agent? You’ll feed us information and I’ll tell you what information to leak. In return I’ll help make sure you have alibis, and protect you from detection.”

"I don't really have a choice, now do I?"

"You do. Besides, as far as I know you might say yes, promise me an alliance and then double cross me. You're a Conservative, after all and your words are worth shit."

Carter's scent spikes angrily. "I resent that. We are just as able to uphold oaths and be honorable."

"Then do so. Give me an oath as binding as a Packrunners' Promise," Marlon says with a teasing smirk.

"Will you fuck me if I do?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yes."

"I can't. I promised Charles not to fuck anyone not pre-approved. But I'll go as far as I think I can and still talk myself out of it."

"I'll take it. I was having a pleasant high and sobered up damn quick. I'd rather go back to feeling good. And I'll tell you the truth, I have longed for someone to be able to talk openly to."

"Being undercover is lonely," Marlon agrees.

* * *

Charles isn't mad about him nearly having sex with Carter. "He's an Alpha," he dismisses, as if another Alpha can't be a threat. He's wrong, but Marlon doesn't dispel the misconception. Charles, however, is angry that he didn't bind Carter with a pack bond. Carter has one, but a very fragile and faint one that will fade within weeks unless he sleeps with other pack members. Jed is also angry that Marlon didn't poach the high-profile Alpha. Aiden too, of course. But Jed's ire dies down when Marlon explains the circumstances and his promise of safety. Aiden thinks personal honour should never go before the good of the pack. Jed doesn't agree. Carter walks in on their argument and that way finds out how close he is to being sniped against his will. It's good, because then he understands that Marlon's refusal to have full intercourse with him was to protect his integrity. It solidifies their alliance in a way nothing else could have. 

For good and bad.

* * *


	33. Breaking The First Rule...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is running out. Marlon is starting to get desperate. (The last chapter in the past, y'all! :D )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter should serve as a reminder that Papa could just as easily be the villain of any story. ^^'

* * *

The alliance is always tenuous these days, pack leaders bickering while their side is slowly losing ground. Marlon counts days seeing their defeat coming closer. He holds his promise to Carter, telling him what to leak, helping him look successful while Carter keeps him posted about the other side. They talk about Coombs. Carter visits Coombs sometimes. When he does, Marlon meets up with Carter in secret afterwards, just so he can get a whiff of Finn's scent before Carter washes it off. Charles might not think an Alpha can be a threat but he's wrong. Finn's Marlon's old Patriarch and nobody is doing anything to reconfirm Marlon's bonds with the pack. Heck, even Charles is only up for cuddles with all that's going on. He's their new Main, being the only O left. But it's still only a title. He's avoided any behaviour that might make his chemicals change (which includes sex with Marlon). He knows he's too young and inexperienced so he's shadowing Jed, soaking in as much as he can as fast as he can. He barely even has time to write. He often does so anyway, late in the evening when Marlon’s lying in bed trying to sleep.

But today Charles has taken some time off for the three visitors in their room. (Marlon's the one picky about visitors. Charles doesn't mind as long as they sleep alone.)

Charles sits on the desk chair turned towards the bed, talking to the two people on either side of Marlon on the bed, laughing. But Marlon isn't listening. He only has eyes for the third visitor in his arms. Little Peter has the same gorgeous blue flare as Laurent and has a strong grip on Marlon's finger. He's making gurgling and purring sounds and Marlon's purring his devotion to the kitling. Arvid's looking a bit worse for the wear. He was bed-bound for almost two weeks after giving birth. But Peter isn't a fussy kitty. Laurent and Arvid get the sleep they need. Mostly. Laurent's tired but that's to do with pack responsibilities, not fatherhood.

This little life in Marlon's arms is proof of yet another failure on his behalf. The war should have been over by now. Peter isn't _safe_.

Marlon pelts and coos encouragement. Peter blinks, flares brighter and puffs up like a ball of fluff, wolf-coloured like Arvid.

Arvid puts his head on Marlon's shoulder. "You know I love you, Peepers, but I don't want you to teach him that."

Marlon's face snaps towards Arvid. "What? _Why?_ He's so good at it."

"It's a death sentence. As an adult, when he's a warrior in his own right, then I don't mind. But you know how kits are. They insist on watching bombings from nearby rooftops and walking through the slums alone,” Arvid says jokingly and winks. But then his scent turns anxious and his eyes worried. “Imagine if he gets cold when he's around the wrong people. I've seen enough Primals hanged for pelting during this war. I don't want that to happen to my son." 

Marlon looks back at Peter and withdraws his fur with a great sense of mourning. The kit copies him, once again naked save from the blond tuft of hair on his head. Marlon purrs his praise but feels like crying. Arvid's willing to risk Peter freezing to death rather than teaching him how to pelt. Carter was scared to admit he'd been born with fur. Something so natural is dangerous to do because of decades of well-planned propaganda. If the war isn't over when Peter turns one, chances are, he won't live to adulthood.

It's time to do something drastic.

* * *

He stands alone in the war room looking at the map. He has set it up according to Carter's intel that has always proved accurate this far. He's planning to break the first rule of Packrunning. For the greater good, of course.

"Has your brain finally cracked completely? You used to have an affinity for tactics but that's setting us up for slaughter."

Marlon's breath hitches. He spins around with his heart in his throat to face General Hartley. "Grandma! I didn't― Are you wearing scent blockers?"

Karen smiles. "We're doing a test on the newest generation of blockers. They cost a fortune but last longer. I'm finding out how long. Now, answer me. Do you not see what that set up would lead to?"

Panicked, Marlon removes the markers signifying the enemy troops they're not supposed to know about. Instantly, his setup looks favourable. "Of course! I was just playing around. Eh-heh,” he hurries to say awkwardly and hides the markers behind his back. He frowns uncertainly. “Am I still allowed to call you grandma? Or should I be saying General Hartley even in private?”

Karen’s smile manages to look soft, warm and sad at the same time. “You do as you please. But it’s been a long time since I was allowed to be someone’s grandma, so if I get to choose...” She raises her brows and shrugs with a little smile. Marlon smiles in return. Grandma it is. She walks up to the map table and studies the markers still there. She picks a green one up, looks at the markings underneath that signifies what pack the unit belongs to, then puts it down and picks up a yellow marker, then repeats with the rest. She side-eyes Marlon and arches an eyebrow knowingly. They're all packs against his plan. "Mar, how close were you with Coombs?"

Marlon looks at his feet. "Close enough to still miss him. Not close enough to want to see him win." He looks up to see her wear a troubled frown. She slowly reaches out to gently grab his arm and pull the hand with the enemy markers to her, then pluck them from his unresisting fingers. She puts them back where Marlon had them on the map. Marlon swallows then makes a decision. "That's how we lose the battle but win the war," he says. He quickly changes the setup to another part of the map, once again based on Carter's intel, choosing the pack units carefully. "And this. The losses will be devastating, forcing a decision in the war room that is unthinkable for many today. But within two months the war will be over and we can begin to repair the country. The longer we hold the stalemate of today, the closer we get to extinction. One or two years down the line, no matter who wins, the hatred between designations will have grown until genocide and forced conversions will be the only option. It will bring a rule of terror I can't stand for."

"I thought you hated Conservatives, Mar?"

Marlon turns to his grandma. "If the Wolfcat slaughters all the prey in the forest, what will it eat but its own kind?" he says earnestly. "Plus, Packrunning is about diversity. Even if we force a whole lot of the Conservatives to convert, they'll be toiling under pack bond compulsion but their attitude and beliefs won't change. A generation or two down the line there wouldn't be diversity anymore. We'd have Conservative packs instead and little by little we'd change until Packrunning is no more." He takes a deep breath. "Jed thinks I don't see what consequences my plan will have for us. I do. But his way doesn't work because most of us aren't well versed in Conservative diplomacy. So the longer it goes on, the more ground their lies about us will hold and we'll start to get desperate. When we do we'll act feral, acting according to the picture they've painted. We can't repair our reputation while we are still at war."

Karen tilts her head and purses her lips. "You know, this war is heartbreaking for me. I've adopted all of America as my pseudo pack. Since this started, I've met soldiers on the other side who've lowered their weapons and with fear and confusion in their eyes asked me what the hell is going on. They're not my enemies. And we’re still killing each other."

"I know. It needs to end, grandma.”

Karen studies the map board. “If we knew there were troops there, I could never green light those attacks. Luckily, none of us knows of any troops in those places,” she says and gives him a _look_ with one eyebrow arched, leaving a pregnant pause that says as much as words could ever do. “So it’s easy to see how you just vent your frustration with your opposers by setting up this political play where all of them would be wiped out in tragic traps that would cost us in manpower but gain you favour in council,” she goes on lightly. “However. I bid you, consider this…” she pulls out one of the drawers on the underside of the table to take up a couple of markers for the USPR. She puts the Union markers on the map. “Here we still have Unionites. The Union left them to fend for themselves when they pulled out, and some of the abandoned troops scattered for the wind. Conscripts trying to get back to their families or simply pretending to be ordinary refugees. But far from all put down their weapons. So here, and here, we still have hot pockets where we fight both the Union and the Aristocrats. And these…” She picks up the yellow and green markers from Marlon’s original setup and moves them down to the Union hotspots. “...live here. They’re defending their territories fang and claw and their neighbours, Progs and Conservatives alike, fight side by side with them. No propaganda has been able to turn their villages and small cities against them. That’s why they oppose you so strongly. However…” She takes up markers for Aristocrat troops and puts them on the other side of the two packs, in both places blocking them in like vices between the Union and the Aristocrats. She turns her head to arch an eyebrow pointedly at Marlon in a silent question if he sees how to play it.

Marlon hadn’t counted on the Union. This way he can manipulate those packs to support him without having to have them die tragically. He pulls at his lower lip in thought. "I'm on the council, but only the highest military leaders get to be in here when a strike is planned. Would you show me the whole board?"

"Only if you show me all your… _imaginary_ scenarios," Karen answers with an upward quirk to her lips. Marlon obliges, putting out all of the Aristocrat markers in the positions Carter has told him about. Karen studies the map contemplating. "Mar… let's pretend you got the power today. Someone handed you the keys to the country, so to speak. What would you do?"

"I'd demand more Packrunners go into politics. I'd need to keep part of the government-run by the other designations to make sure we don't oppress them. But I'd leave loopholes for me to get rid of them if they get too powerful or started to conspire to get rid of another designation. I'd have the education to be based on science and as unbiased as possible, with standardized, national tests so that even schools that broke the law and forced prayers and taught their opinions as facts would have to teach actual science too or their students wouldn't get into higher education. I think, in time I'd introduce general elections, if we managed to undo the damage decades of propaganda made. I'd make laws that offered a measure of freedom to all designations―"

"You'd truly have the other designations in your parliament?" 

"Of course. Someone needs to speak for Keith and Naomi."

Karen starts setting up the board, filling in the blanks about both Union hotspots and Aristocrats. "Sean said you could be a brilliant intelligence officer. What went wrong with Coombs?"

"I pack bonded. My affection for him turned real and I didn't think a Conservative could be a Patriarch on his own."

"Often behaviour can trigger the right chemistry. People who act dominantly enough and have the belief that they are worthy of leadership will gain those hormones on their own. I have no doubt that you too would develop those kinds of hormones if you lost your pack bond. Speaking of, you should get your bond re-confirmed. It’s fading,” Karen says, dropping the last sentence in like it’s no big deal while putting out the last troop position and taking a step away from the map so Marlon gets a full view.

It is a big deal. Marlon wasn’t sure. It wasn’t _that_ long since he had sex with his mate. But he has to stop to think. Charles doesn’t have the Main hormones yet. Who else has he been intimate with, looking back to the most recent time? Laurent and Arvid, Patriarch and Main of another pack. Sean, Patriarch. Carter. Granted, Carter and he didn’t have penetrative intercourse, but still. Most of his physical affection came from out-pack individuals. Perhaps that's why his bond is fading? Progs and Conservatives have it easy. They don't have to think about their bonds the same way as Packrunners. Carter faces the opposite problem when he's affectionate with several members of the same pack. You can hump like bunnies with one pack member, but add another to the roster and suddenly a pack bond might form. Their basic biology isn't adapted to the intricate out-pack relationships of modern humans, but to easily integrate strays like wolfcats do. Marlon changes around their own markers on the map to show Karen that he understands her message. It's still a political setup that will gain him the support he needs but the losses won't be quite as devastating and will strengthen the pressure on the Union. Then he plucks the enemy markers they aren’t supposed to know about off the board and turns to his grandma.

She nods, content. "Tell me, it would be easy to fake the destruction of the Williams pack with you as the sole survivor. If it is like you say, and Coombs was your Patriarch, he'd most likely take you back if you went to him. You have claws so you're never unarmed. So why don't we send you to assassinate him?" She tilts her head and looks at him curiously.

"Technically, it would be easy for me to get at him if he wants to be intimate with me. In reality, I never want to find out if I can murder someone I love during lovemaking. I'm having a hard time as it is telling myself he is responsible for the death of my kit. I often find myself making excuses for him," he admits. "Aside from that, it would be bad for us if he died. He's not regarded as powerful amongst his peers. He manipulates them and gives them advice, making them think it's their ideas. So while he is the mastermind he also prefers subtle manipulation and slow conversion. He doesn't want to annihilate us, he wants us to fall in line without us noticing doing so. He planned an operation that would take decades to come to fruition. The war started because someone got impatient and ignored his advice. If he is killed, there’s no one to whisper ‘patience’ in the ears of our enemies. Then we might very well be looking at the genocide of us Packrunners.” He pauses to drag a hand through his hair. “I know I’m emotionally compromised and biased, but I genuinely believe that it would spell disaster for us if he’s killed before it’s time. If I thought it would help us, I’d have ordered him killed.” He pauses again and briefly looks at the vent by the ceiling. “If I had the means to do so, naturally,” he adds.

“Naturally,” she agrees. "One can't expect a former undercover agent to still have contacts after his cover is blown," she says with a look at the vent of her own. "Mar, would you do me the honour of accompanying me for a walk in the garden?"

Outside, finally out of earshot of anyone else, Karen chuckles to herself. "Nothing like having you grow up in the house to teach us that the walls can have ears."

Marlon smirks.

"I'm not going to ask you how many assets you have or who they are. You won't tell me if you care about their safety. But I'd appreciate it if you'd keep me posted on what they find out," Karen says.

Marlon's strolling beside her with his hands behind his back. He nods and tracks the flight of a nearby meadowlark.

"I used to be so afraid that you'd grow up to be full of blind hatred," Karen goes on. "With your violent fits of rage and constant anger..."

"I'm full of hatred. I hate those disgusting Conservatives with a passion," Marlon agrees.

"That may as well be. But I've had extensive talks with the Conservatives around you. The men who have fought beside or under you tell me they see no difference between how you treat them and their Packrunning peers. Naomi tells me you've been nothing but a gentleman and that you in no way have tried to make her change who she is. And you have a dalliance ongoing with Major Wadsworth. So even if you hate Conservatives, you don't hate blindly." Karen suddenly chuckles to herself. "My talk with Major Wadsworth was the most awkward talk I've had in years. He told me he'd surrendered himself to you as a slave in hopes to gain your favour. Naturally, I was curious as to what you did with that power. I have never seen anyone turn so scarlet."

Marlon sniggers. "I did very little. He's beautiful. I took pictures of him and I asked him to be honest with me. It was he who suggested intimacy."

"So he said. He also said you refused to go all the way and that he later overheard an argument and found out that your refusal was for his benefit, not to bind him to the pack against his will. It jarred him. He thought you completely unscrupulous before that. I know Jed was unhappy with your decision to act honourably but I’m proud of you. And Jed can be as mad about it as he wants, it still reeks of his influence.” Karen smiles in humour, the smile then momentarily shifting into something more wistful. She stops and turns towards Marlon, serious again. “As a General and as a grandma, I cannot condone the breaking of the first rule, or targeting kits. Sending pack troops to combat to get slaughtered without their knowledge of the sacrifice they’re about to make? It’s breaking the first rule. We are one. And I can’t do it.”

“Lucky for you, you don’t know about the traps,” Marlon deadpans.

“Lucky indeed. I won’t argue against you in council, though I won’t take an official stance to support you. But the war needs to end. If you're going to follow through, you’ll need a beating heart of stone in that chest. Are you sure you can go down that road?”

“Yes. If I can manage to forgive you for taking my room away, I can do this too,” Marlon says seriously. 

“You’ve finally forgiven me?”

Marlon frowns. “Of course not. Get off my property, you hag,” he jokes and gestures in the direction of the gates on the other side of the house. Then he sniggers and leans in to give her an affectionate temple rub on the shoulder to make it clear he wasn’t serious.

Karen hugs him. “Thank you for bringing Jed back. It might not have been the right thing to do, forcing him to siphon, but I don’t want to imagine living in a world without him,” she whispers.

Marlon hugs her back, pressing his nose against her shoulder futilely since the scentblockers mask her scent. “Are you two getting back together? I smelled him on you yesterday.”

Karen sighs. “If he ever steps down, perhaps. My pack is big now, and most aren’t interested in joining another pack or moving here to become businessmen after the war. But I still love him so, Mar. All these years and he still makes my knees weak when he directs that flirty smirk towards me.”

Marlon takes a short step away. “You met as kits, right? What were you like, back then?”

Karen grins. “They used to call me his voice of reason. Which was true, by all means. But having a voice of reason doesn’t mean you listen to it. Sort of what Aiden is to you.”

Marlon blows a raspberry and smirks. "I'm _his_ voice of reason," he says.

Karen laughs. "You and Jed grow more alike for everyone day. His answer when I said 'Jed, no,' was always 'you don't have to come'. Naturally, I came along every time. And he regarded his Main and Patriarch's orders as mere recommendations. Like when he saved Phillip from getting lobotomized."

"He did _what_? Who the heck would want to lobotomize Phillip??"

"You had a Main who sent him to a mental facility because he scared the kits just by being himself. Phillip didn't do well there. He got more and more feral and aggressive. They pumped him full of drugs but it didn't help so the Main greenlit the request to lobotomize him. Jed overheard the decision so he ran away to break Phillip out. Which he did. With me as company. You should have seen Phillip when we got back. He was always scrawny and had lost so much weight while he was locked up. But right then he carried more authority than anyone. He marched straight into the dinner table and declared Antonette, your Main, expulsed from the pack for the crime of breaking the first rule by tricking a pack member into a trap to be captured and tortured by strangers. It turned out most of the pack didn't know where he'd been and Antonette was thrown out on the spot."

"I didn't know any of this." Marlon's both horrified and delighted. Horrified that anyone could think to lock Phillip up and delighted to hear his reaction to getting out.

“No… We don’t talk about Antonette often. She’s nothing more than a side note in the chronicles. But Jed was…” Karen proceeds to tell Marlon about Jed’s antics as a kit and Juvie. Marlon’s missed his grandma. There’s still a great divide between them and Marlon doesn’t think he could ever regain that untainted affection for her he had as a small kit. But he saw her and Jed both seeking comfort with each other when Marlon’s squad brought Michael’s body back. And the two of them couldn’t be in a room together without their chemistry being a tangible thing. Marlon hadn’t seen it when he was younger. Now it was painfully obvious that they were the very epitome of truemates, still in love after all these years. He doesn’t know how to feel about it. The Hartley pack has grown to nearly 200 people, all soldiers who’d been ‘orphaned’ from their packs and joined his grandma. They might be warriors but they aren’t suited to be Williamses. Marlon hopes he doesn’t have to live through Jed’s heart breaking over grandma one more time. He says nothing about it, and instead enjoys the stories he gets to hear.

* * *

Marlon has a plan. It’s the biggest operation he’s ever considered―a scheme so grand it seems impossible at first glance. Having been an ‘apprentice’ to Coombs, he’s certain it’ll work. His first step is to call a secret meeting with the representatives of the free press he once invited to tell the truth. He gives them a proposition he expects to have to negotiate long and hard to get through. He meets surprisingly little resistance and all he has to promise in return is freedom of speech and press when the war is won. There are some conditions from both sides but contracts and pledges of secrecy are signed and everyone walks out of that room grim-faced and determined.

Next up comes careful manipulation to get the two attacks he set up to happen, with the right people in the troops. Only Karen, Carter and he himself know that those who go on those missions aren't likely to come back. He’s breaking the first rule.

After that, it’s pretending to be as shocked and distraught as the rest when news reach them of their two horrible defeats. Most people walk around smelling of mourning, fear or anxiety after that. Not Jed and not Marlon. A few other individuals from other packs also manage to keep their scents neutral. But since everyone smells the same any anxiety that could have been a telltale of treason goes unnoticed. It's a good thing or Carter might have been in trouble. He seeks Marlon out to siphon him for comfort. Again, he triggers the instincts for bonding sex. This time Marlon pulls the breaks already at the kissing, again asking Carter to join the pack, again getting a no. Since Carter is aware of what's going on this time, respecting his ‘no’ is simply a ploy to get him more loyal, not to the pack but to Marlon himself. It seems to be working. Carter is more and more open about himself. About fears, hopes, dreams, and personal things. The less force Marlon applies to steer him, the more solid Carter's support is.

The play to get rid of part of his opposition makes more people, in desperation, ready to support 'plan C'. Marlon puts it as an official suggestion during council and at the same time suggests that those who feel deep within that they can't participate should instead go to fight the Union at the hotspots. It instantly gets him the support of those who'd been most vehemently against the plan. "We can help capture the mates and kits but we can't be there at the reckoning. After the captures we go home to fight the Union and bring with us others who feel like us," one of the midwest Mains declares. The operation gets dubbed ‘The Reckoning’ and gains favour quickly in almost all factions.

There's one major obstacle, though. Jedikiah.

Although the council seems like a democracy, it's not. Packs are ranked the same way as pack members, with dominant packs having veto right. Packs like the Teyshas in Texas, the Talons in California, and the Williamses hold immense power even if they have few members. The Mains of these packs could technically decide everything by themselves even if they don’t. Since Charles hasn’t taken his position yet (not even Marlon considers him remotely ready for it) Jedikiah wields the ultimate power. And he puts his foot down. No matter how eloquent Marlon is he can’t get anyone to stand up to Jed once Jed’s used his veto power.

Aiden never says much when the issue is discussed so Marlon seeks his brother out in the evening. Aiden’s in his room. Marlon knocks and waits until Aiden calls out ‘Come in!’ He opens the door intending to say ‘I need your support for the reckoning,’ but instead ends up saying “You’re alone?” His horndog brother shouldn’t be _alone_. That’s just off.

Aiden frowns testily at him and sits up from where he’d been lying fully clothed in bed staring at the ceiling. “Yes. Because _someone_ decided to be a huge knotblock. I choose one regular lover and you just had to selfishly cut me off from him?”

Picking a fight. Marlon hadn’t expected that. “That’s an unfair accusation. First off, it’s not like you’re not poking any O that wants you, which happens to be all of them. Secondly, Carter came to siphon me because he needed soothing. He’ll be back in your bed in two weeks when the risk of forming a pack bond has faded. I didn’t instigate it.”

“You could have said no and sent him to siphon me,” Aiden snipes looking at the floor between them. 

“Noo,” Marlon says patiently. “I couldn’t. Because he’s expressly said he doesn’t want to run in a pack. If he siphons you he’ll be bound to us and he knows it.”

“What difference does it make who he siphons?” Aiden asks with an annoyed gesture, still not bothering to look at Marlon.

Marlon crosses his arms and leans against the doorpost. “I’d say it makes a world of difference seeing as my own bond will have faded within a couple of weeks.”

Aiden’s head snaps up, eyes wide. He scents in Marlon’s direction. “Athena!” Between one breath and another Aiden’s by Marlon’s side, grabbing him by the arm and tearing him into the room. Marlon’s pushed towards the bed and thrown onto it with Aiden following on top. Aiden holds him down and starts marking him up with desperation, tearing at his clothes to get them off. Marlon feels affectionate laughter bubble up unbidden from deep inside. Aiden pushes up to hold himself on straight arms above Marlon. “You think this is funny? I stop paying attention to you for a couple of weeks and you're instantly on your way to leave."

Marlon grins. "It's funny because you have the best sense of smell and you haven't noticed."

Aiden scowls, reeking of distress. "I've got a lot on my mind and for Athena's sake, you're mated to our Main! If there's one person's bond I shouldn't have to worry about, it's yours. We need to get you to Jed to reconfirm it instantly."

Marlon smiles and reaches up to pet Aiden's hair. "He's not going to reconfirm it."

Aiden makes a frustrated noise. "You think he doesn't want you in the pack just because you have a disagreement? Of course, he does! Don't be an idiot. Come on." He starts to get up but Marlon pulls him back down again.

"If you leave now I'm going to my room," Marlon threatens and wraps his arms around Aiden. The unspoken threat lies in nobody being allowed to come inside.

Aiden starts pulling at Marlon's clothes again, rubbing his temple where he can. "I just don't get it. It's too soon," he mutters to himself.

Marlon purrs soothingly, nuzzles Aiden’s neck gland until it starts to secrete and then siphons, wanting to calm Aiden down by bonding before he brings up his issue. He really doesn’t like bottoming, but he can deal. When he gets Aiden’s health status he frowns. “You’re not alright,” he states. Aiden’s an emotional mess and he’s _exhausted_.

“Heck no, I’m not. We can talk about that later. First, get naked.”

Marlon chirps in amusement at Aiden’s bossiness and does as he’s told.

A while later they lie on their sides wrapped around each other face to face, purrs synced in a post-bonding haze. "I don't know why my bond is fading so fast," Marlon remarks lazily.

Aiden chuckles. "Oh, I figured that out the moment I siphoned you. It's a bother, but the least troublesome reason you could have had."

"Then what is it?"

Aiden smirks. "I don't really want to tell you lest you get ideas. I'm just glad you don't have the same sexual drive as me or it would have been a problem because you would have been sleeping with Ava, Kaiden, Maurice and Maria on a regular basis."

"Who are they?"

Aiden gives him a smack across the shoulder with a frown. "Marlon's mob, you dimwit. _Athena_ , sometimes your arrogance knows no bounds."

Marlon lifts his head to look questioningly at him. "Marlon's mob?"

Aiden chuckles again and strokes Marlon over his sweat-matted hair. "They're called that. Your greatest supporters. Maria, a tall, dark man. Ava, dresses exclusively in orange. Kaiden, young hothead who worships the ground you walk on―"

" _Ooh_ , okay, I know who they are." He has trouble retaining information as it is so he hasn't memorized the names of his supporters, only the opposition. It’s a problem that’s gotten a lot better with Carter’s help. Marlon’s loathe to call it therapy but that’s what it is when they sit talking some evenings. It’s possible that he couldn’t have thought out his grand plan if Carter hadn’t played therapist for him and kept him grounded. "And if I wasn't broken I would have bent Maria over the nearest surface in no time. He's gorgeous."

Aiden turns his face to scream in frustration into the pillow. But when he looks up again he's grinning and chirping in amusement. "I thought you were over this. For the last time, _you're not broken_. I have no doubt that if you spend some quality time with Maria you'd be ready to make love to him within three to six months. Also, _you_ have a type," he says and boops Marlon on the nose.

"I do?"

"Yes. Barring scent attraction you like them tall, athletic, and charismatic. And, I think, distinctly male."

Marlon tssks.

"Arvid, Keith, Coombs, Maria, Carter―" Aiden starts recounting.

"Okay, okay, I get it. You're wrong. Those are just coincidences."

"Nope. And come to think of it, they're all attractive by Progressive standards."

"I know how to appreciate beauty," Marlon snarks defensively. "What's that got to do with my bond fading?"

Aiden rolls his eyes then suddenly looks wily. "I'll tell you if you give me a Packrunner's promise to be a Long Island Williams for as long as I'm alive."

Marlon scowls. It's a strange thing to promise since it's a given. But Aiden looks like he's trying to trick him. "Fine. I promise I'll remain part of this, our birth pack, for as long as you live. However, I will not be painted as an oathbreaker if we move to a different location or if I'm expulsed for other reasons."

Aiden smirks in satisfaction. "Dual pack bonds. That's why your bond was fading."

"What? _How?_ Shouldn't I have noticed that myself? And what pack? I'd definitely know if I was turning into a Hale."

"Your own pack, dummy. You've collected several Mains and Patriarchs ready to bond with and follow you, hence you are developing the same chemicals as Jed. But since you're the only one in your pack we could not smell it. I suspect your idiotic belief that Jed won't reconfirm you as well as your mate's lack of sex drive also plays a part."

Marlon blinks in surprise. It can happen. It rarely does, but it can happen. That's part of why they say a pack can't have two Mains or Patriarchs. When someone very dominant no longer feels like part of the pack they belong to yet doesn't leave, and people are drawn to them, it can happen that they develop the chemicals of a leader and all the sudden a new pack has formed. But it's usually a fast process since people are horndogs that happily poke their penises into each other at ‘hello’. What Marlon’s failed to find out is if a pack can have two Patriarchs sharing the role, both content in their pack. "Good that you fixed it." As enticing as the idea of a pack of his own is, it would equal a demotion power-wise right now. "So what’s got you so messed up? It seems to me like you haven’t slept for days.”

Aiden rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. He runs a hand through his hair in a self-soothing manner. “I can’t stop thinking about it. If I had been there, maybe I could have done something. We lost so many people and I feel guilty.”

_Darn._

“We had no way of knowing the Aristocrats had so many soldiers stationed there,” Marlon lies and purrs soothingly. “Nobody blames you or anyone else who ordered the attack.” At least _that’s_ true.

“I know. I know that. But I still _feel_ guilty. And it set us back so far. A few more losses like that and we’re done for,” Aiden frets. “These thoughts come when I try to sleep and won’t let themselves be logicked away. It's worse now when I sleep alone."

"I'll sleep with you. Not every night lest Charles forgets that Amara is banned from our room," Marlon offers.

"Thanks."

"This war needs to end so you no longer need to be haunted by deaths we couldn't have prevented in the first place. I need you to speak up in support of the reckoning during the council."

Aiden turns his head to look at him. "No. Mar, I think your suggestion is heinous. We'd become monsters."

"It's for the greater good," Marlon argues.

"If we start sacrificing innocent and people who haven't chosen to be sacrificed, it's no longer for the greater good, it's another brand of evil."

Marlon's jaw clenches. He's quiet for a beat, staving down his annoyance, then he scoots closer to put his head on Aiden's chest. "Okay. I'll allow it. If you need to oppose me to sleep at night, then you can."

Aiden frowns. "You... You're not going to argue?"

"No. I can be the greater evil needed to ensure that the next generation can live without fear. I will make the reckoning happen without you so you can keep a clean conscience. When the world trembles in fear of Packrunners it'll be my name they whisper. When our country starts to heal I'll be the one to murder the upstarts who think to try to rise up. I won't be by your side when you unlock the gates of the concentration camps because I'll stand ready to throw people into them. As long as I'm alive I'll be the monster under the bed of the other monsters."

Aiden clucks a pained sound. " _Mar_ …"

"No. You're what is beautiful about me. It's enough that the dreams of one of us run red with blood."

Aiden swallows audibly. "You… you have a lot of nightmares?"

"Every night I relive finding Arvid chained up in camp, but I'm too late. Every night I see my daughter and Clara die gruesomely. Every night I desperately press my hands to Michael's chest trying to stop the bleeding. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of where my mind takes me when I sleep."

"The only death that I have nightmares about, is yours," Aiden whispers and turns his head to nuzzle Marlon’s hair.

Marlon smiles. "Then let's keep it that way. I swore myself to Ares. I'll pay his price."

Aiden's quiet for a while. "Did Michael have to suffer for long?"

"No. Took him less than 30 seconds to bleed out. And at the end, he suddenly looked behind me and smiled. He said 'Hey, you…' softly then he was gone. I think Lucifer came to get him. At least, in my dreams when I turn my head to see what he is smiling about, she's there."

"Then she was," Aiden decides. He's quiet for a beat, then, "Thank you." Marlon doesn't answer. Soon thereafter Aiden falls asleep. Marlon lies awake pondering how he'll sway people without Aiden. Occasionally he siphons Aiden just to smell the exhaustion recede. Aiden sleeps for a whopping 12 hours. Marlon gets 5.

* * *

"No! That's final! This meeting is officially over and you go out and figure out a solution that doesn't entail murdering defenceless kits in front of their parents. _Excused._ "

People get up and start filling out. Marlon is boiling with rage. He's been courting 'Marlon's mob' as well as others to put pressure on Jed but Jed stands firm. Aiden isn't speaking in support of Marlon but he isn't speaking against him either. If he had, Marlon's cause would be lost and he'd have to figure out an alternative route.

Jed leaves the room and Marlon storms after him, pushing people out of the way. He catches up to Jed in the grand entry, grabs his arm to spin him around. "Stop being such a coward, protecting your Aristocratic playmates. We need to end this war before time runs out and this is the way to do it!"

Jed stops doing whatever mind-trick it is he does to withhold emotional scent-bleeding and Marlon has to take a step back to sneeze from the sting of his grandpa’s rage. Jed grabs him by the collar and yanks him close flaring fire-bright, fangs dropping rapidly as he snarls his answer. “My no is final. It’s not who we are. We’ve been warriors since the dawn of our pack. _Not_ to gain power and privilege, but in the defense of the helpless. We went into business to fund our military branch and put ourselves to use defending first the state, then the country. We are who we are in the defense of kits, Marlon. And you want to murder them? Never! For as long as I’m Patriarch of our pack, the answer is _never_.” 

Their faces are inches apart and Jed’s grip on Marlon’s collar is choking. He should lick his lips and avert his face, instead he drops his own fangs, flaring with the same intensity as Jed. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be,” he counters.

Jed lets go of him with a push, making him stagger backwards. “What are you going to do then? _Challenge me?_ I’m warning you, Mar, I will hold no bars. Not about this."

Marlon's heart starts beating faster. He's suddenly acutely aware that they have an audience. If he backs down it's over. It's accepting that the reckoning won't happen. But if he challenges Jed he will lose. They've sparred before, Marlon giving it his all and Jed holding back, and _still_ , Marlon didn't stand a chance. Now they're surrounded by everyone who's anyone. Not only the leaders from the meeting but other people that had been waiting outside. There is no chance to back out of this with his dignity intact. Jed holding no bars means he'll be maimed for life or worse. He might be killed. He'd need the luck of Ares _and_ surprise on his side to win against Jed. But Jed's ready now.

He can smell his own scent souring with fear. Jed smells it and smirks, eyes narrowing knowingly.

Marlon feels like throwing up.

So be it. If he dies for the cause, he dies.

He puffs himself up, pelts under his clothes and claws on his hands. Jed's eyes harden when he realises that Marlon won't back down. Marlon prepares to die and sends a silent prayer to his god. ' _I am Marlon, son of Ares, and I pray to you, grant me what I need to see Jedikiah beat_.' 

He swallows, then takes a deep breath in preparation to issue the challenge. The sound of the rank challenging growl reaches his ears. It takes him a full heartbeat to realize he hasn't growled yet. His eyes go wide, he freezes shell-shocked. Jed looks as gobsmacked as he does. Around them people start murmuring and chirping, the scents of excitement, anxiety, and―because people are messed up―arousal fills the air.

As one, Jed and Marlon turn their heads to look at the challenger. Aiden comes walking towards them, eyes glowing so strongly you can't see his pupils. His fangs are fully dropped and when he pulls his shirt off he's pelted on his back just so he can bristle threateningly.

"Think about what you're doing, Aide. I don't want to fight you," Jed says.

"Then forfeit," Aiden answers uncompromisingly.

Jed's face shutters as he turns to face the oncoming threat. Marlon slowly backs away, trying to catch Aiden's gaze so he can shake his head. But Aiden has his full focus on Jed, ignoring anyone else.

Praying to Ares is a dangerous thing. His support comes with a price tag, unlike Athena's. Marlon's afraid. This isn't what he wanted. But rhetoric is everything and he's an idiot. You don't mess with a rank challenge. It's out of his hands. He backs into the circle of spectators, frozen inside, scared witless for Aiden's life. Aiden isn't expendable. Aiden, Charles, Peter Hale and Arvid are the only ones he isn't willing to sacrifice for the cause. But there's nothing he can do.

Keith appears by his side, reeking of anxiety. "What's happening?" he whispers.

"They're about to fight over pack leadership," Marlon whispers back. "And Jedikiah has made clear he's willing to kill to keep it."

"Shit. Whoever would do that?"

"I would. But if I went up against Jed, I'd die."

Jed roars a fierce warning, flare going to the same pupil-hiding intensity while he shrugs out of his suit jacket and throws it aside. Aiden isn't deterred. The two of them circle each other warily at a respectable distance. Jed removes his tie and rolls up his sleeves without taking his eyes off Aiden. Suddenly there are gasps and ‘Ooh’s from the Progs and Conservatives while Primals make sounds of appreciation. Marlon isn’t sure why until Aiden’s face comes into view. He’s pelted around his eyes, just enough to create a mask that accentuates his eyes with the black and white lines under the eyes and the reddish stripes along his cheekbones and between his brows up towards his forehead.

"Why has he done that?" Keith whispers.

"To look more intimidating," Marlon answers. He's about to say something more but the words freeze on his tongue when Jed lightning-fast, attacks. Aiden barely evades and then it's on.

Marlon watches drymouthed, heart rabbiting in his throat. It's brutal. Both fighters are quick, agile, big, strong and technical. It quickly gets bloody but both are good at ignoring pain to keep going. Anytime either gets the other to fall they bounce right up again, in some cases blindly. To stay on the ground is to get defeated. They clash and separate and clash again. A kick to the solar plexus sends Jed flying. He hits his head in the landing but rolls right up to stagger into attack mode. You can smell the pain when he takes the first breath again after having the wind knocked out of him.

Aiden staggers backwards from several hits to his head and when he turns his head Marlon sees that one side of his face is covered in blood from the temple to the jaw, eye swelling shut. 

Both combatants stop to roar and posture at each other. They’re getting tired and a short pause like this gives the combatants time to assess their injuries and submit. But none of them is backing down and they go right back at it.

It feels like the fight goes on forever. Minutes tick by feeling like hours. More and more often they wind up wrestling on the floor. Jed's a dirtier fighter than Aiden. It looks like Aiden will lose. Marlon withholds a pitiful, worried clucking. Someone takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. It's Naomi. Charles stands beside Karen on the opposite side of the wide circle. Marlon squeezes Naomi's hand back. He keeps forgetting to breathe. His brother is losing. It should have been him out there. Except, if it was, he'd been dead minutes ago. Jed's fighting for his belief, not prestige, and that makes a difference. Jed's fighting like Marlon always does; do or die.

Aiden's so darn tired. Normally, a fight is over in seconds or a few intense minutes. This just goes on and on and on. Adrenaline burns away accuracy and endurance. Jed's got Aiden in lockdown and Aiden lifts his head to meet Marlon's gaze, red flare dimming from exhaustion. A small, terrified whine escapes Marlon. 

Aiden's face shutters in a mask of determination. With a roar he heaves himself up on pure, raw strength, throwing himself down with all his weight backwards slamming Jed underneath. Jed's temporarily stunned, losing his grip ever so slightly - enough for Aiden to flip around. There are awful cracking noises paired with an acute scent of pain when Aiden shifts his jaw and cranium way too fast.

Jed moves as if to heave himself up, then freezes, eyes wide.

Everything goes still.

Marlon shuffles to the side to see why they're so still, only their chests heaving.

Aiden has Jed's throat locked in his jaws, sharp fangs pressed down and ready to tear.

Jed's flare dims until you can see the pupils. His eyes reflect the realisation of near death. Desperately, his gaze jumps around. The spectators collectively hold their breaths. Aiden starts growling - a request for Jed to give up.

Jed smells of fear. His gaze lands on Marlon. For an eternity―several heartbeats―their gazes are locked. Then Jed's face hardens with determination, his pupils slit into thin lines and his flare brightens. His muscles tense in preparation to rise and pay the final price.

The pitiful clucking of a mate about to be left makes Jed freeze again, gaze jumping to Karen.

Karen has her hand pressed to her mouth, eyes glassy from unshed tears. The scent of her sorrow starts to saturate the air, overtaking all other scents. Karen, who's outlived all her three kits, who once chose to forsake her greatest love to ensure every American could have a future. Who still is as in love with Jed as she's ever been. She's about to see her grandkit kill the man she loves. The alternative would have been to see the opposite. Why? Because the Alphas in their pedigree are all die-hard stubborn and will rather die than to bend.

Jed looks at Karen for a drawn-out moment. Nobody makes a sound except grandma who keeps clucking mournfully, pleading for Jed not to leave her.

Jed deflates, flare and spirit dying, he licks his lips and sounds his defeat.

Marlon lets out a shaky breath, every cell in his body feeling like jelly.

Aiden lets up his bitten grip on Jed's throat, shifting his face back to normal he stands up to his full height, tall and proud and heedless of injuries and exhaustion. "I am Aiden Williams, Patriarch of the Long Island Williams pack. The Reckoning is happening. We start planning tomorrow at 10:30," he declares. Then he crouches down to gently care for Jed and to solidify the shift in power.

Karen goes to join them keeping Jed's face in her lap purring comfortingly while it happens.

Marlon waits in the background while people disperse. He's silently hoping Charles will come to comfort him but his mate is nowhere to be seen. Carter sneaks up behind him and whispers, "Good work. I was worried there for a while but I should have known you knew what you were doing."

Marlon nearly jerks in surprise at the implication that he'd planned for Aiden to take his fight. It's not true but he doesn't refute it. "Get me all the medical equipment I need to see to my brother's injuries and have it delivered to his room."

"With all due respect, I think we should let one of our professionals see to his―"

"If they are needed I'll call for them," Marlon interrupts. "For now I want them to see to Jedikiah's health first."

"Yes, Sir," Carter answers and melts back into the background.

Marlon waits until Aiden is done then silently walks one step behind when Aiden heads for his room. There are two medics standing by outside ready to help. It's a good thing, because Aiden had been faking strength up there with the best of them. He nearly collapses once they’re inside. Marlon helps him to the bed and then lets the medics in. Aiden declines painkillers, saying he needs to have his head screwed on but asks them to leave him some morphine when they're done. He's given blood and Marlon lovingly cleans, stitches and dresses the long gash on his face while the medics work on the rest of the body. The single, deep gash is from one of Jed's claws and will leave a scar that will last for as long as Aiden lives.

After the medics are done and have left the room Marlon sits on the edge of the bed petting Aiden's hair while Aiden stares at the ceiling. They’re silent. Marlon doesn't know what to say and Aiden doesn't speak.

It's quiet for a long while.

"You know, I thought I was so clever, tricking you into promising me to remain a Williams," Aiden says at last. "In reality, I painted you into a corner that could only end this way." He huffs a humourless half-laugh. "I know you. You don't fold for anyone. And grandpa is the same."

"You didn't have to do it."

Aiden looks at Marlon. "Mar, you idiot. I can take you down in less than a minute. Grandpa is a better fighter than me. I was about to see you die. You know it or you wouldn't have been so afraid. And still you were gearing up to issue the challenge."

"Still…" Marlon persists.

“You're the air my lungs breathe and the blood my heart pumps."

Marlon chuckles sadly and cups Aiden’s cheek on the side that Jed hasn’t demolished. Aiden’s hazel-green eye is riddled with pain but softens when he leans into the touch. His other eye has swollen completely shut. He’s still lucky that the claw that dug its deep furrow in his face narrowly missed his eye. “You’ve got a good heart and bad blood,” Marlon jokes.

“You actually believe that, don’t you? That you’re bad or evil?” Aiden asks rhetorically. “You’re not bad blood, Mar. You’re capable of darker deeds than most, but you’re also ready to love strangers at first hello and the only thing anyone has to do to gain your devotion, loyalty and protection, is to surrender to you. I’m not like that. I only have space for one love in my heart and you took that spot. I’m Michael to your Luci. If you die before me my spirit will follow you over while my body goes through the motions in wait for the day we’re reunited.”

Marlon smiles and shakes his head. He doesn’t believe that. He hopes Aiden is wrong, and some time he’ll meet someone that gets his pulse raising and his spirits soaring. Someone aside from Marlon. “Did you already take your morphine while I wasn’t looking?” he jokes.

"Oh, shut up." Aiden struggles to sit up, breath stuttering from the pain in one of his arms and cold sweat breaking out on his face. "But I do like to get this pain reduced soon so let's get down to business. What's the plan?"

"What do you mean?"

"I _mean_ ," Aiden says impatiently, "tomorrow I'm going to have to stand at the head of that table and talk like I know exactly what we're doing and how we'll solve every problem. I'm going to have to sound like I've been in the know from the start and that I have no doubts in my support. I know you. For every word you've said about the reckoning, there are ten you haven't said. Now's the time you tell me everything. From the kitnappings, the demands we make and how the aftermath is going to look. I'm willing to bet a kidney you've made plans to ensure we don't see a repeat of all this in a decade or in our lifetime for that matter. So spill."

Marlon pulls on his lower lip in thought, looking Aiden in the eye. "I don't think you'll like it."

"Oh, I already know that. But the alternative was you dying so there is no alternative. I would have joined you with Coombs if that's the way you would have gone. I can do this as well."

"Very well. In short, we blame the Union, Packrunners take over politics, and it never happened unless anyone specifically asks if it did."

Aiden frowns. "How do you mean?"

"You know how we were always told when we were kits that we need to look at the bigger picture? I did just that. I had a meeting with the press we invited to tell the truth. They agreed to give us one big lie. When we take over government we pause time a few years before the war happened and skip ahead to after the moment we take control. We alter birth certificates if we have to. We make things they changed look like clerical errors that we correct and the things we can't change we blame on the Union getting insiders into the government. A major scale deceit. You won't like it because it'll make it harder for Packrunners to throw off the fear, get all their territories back, and Progs will still have to struggle. But it will prevent any outrage from any designation seeking revenge and there won't be any young upstarts reading about all this in history books getting ideas and glorifying the Aristocrats decades from now." Marlon proceeds to tell him the absolutely massive scheme he's thought out to minimize the damage of the terrifying deed they're about to commit, but also to prevent Packrunners from getting blood fever going berserk with their new power.

"You're right. I don't like it. Why haven't you brought this up earlier? People won't agree to this. We need more time to convince them. A lot more time."

Marlon shakes his head. "No. It's about timing." When he'd thought about this solution he'd suddenly remembered Carter's conversation with Phillip's invisible friends. "We're many with grudges and I fear that we might end up doing to Conservatives what they've done to us or worse. The thing that bothers me about that is that a great part of the population has no idea we're in a civil war. They're being ruthlessly manipulated. It would be cruel to punish them for having been kept in the dark. So we suggest the solution after everyone is properly traumatized. They'll be desperate to cover up and forget what they've just done. It's one thing to say yes to the theoretical solution of murdering a few kits to save everyone else, it's another to stand there and see them cry and beg before they die. Most of our people don't understand that the majority of these kits won't cheep. They think maybe ten percent won't while the reality is the opposite. Our people will be nearly as traumatized as the parents. They will agree to anything that means no more deaths."

Aiden looks at him in silence for a long time. "You know… if I didn't know you, I'd be terrified of you. I’m glad you’re on my side."

"Promise me one thing. Promise me that when the moment comes, you don't kill anyone. You stand there looking grim, and if a kit cheeps you immediately ask which pack will adopt it. You be the one to carry them to safety. Please, promise me not to bloody yourself," Marlon pleads.

"That hardly seems fair. But okay. I promise."

"Thank you. Can I give you the morphine now?"

Aiden smiles without humour. His lip is bleeding faintly again. "I'd like nothing more."

* * *

"After that, everything went fast. Within two weeks we had mates and kits rounded up. The Aristocrats came to city hall for negotiation as per our demands, bringing with them the ones who didn't have kits in fear of what we'd do if not everyone was present. I'm not going into detail about what happened. I’m sure you can imagine. They thought they could negotiate themselves out of the situation and were arrogant from the start. That didn't last when we brought their kits forth one by one. Only slightly less than a fourth of the kits cheeped and were adopted. The Aristocrats themselves were hanged afterwards, most of them. A few were imprisoned. It was to our advantage that the government had kept records of everything when we started the cover-up process. We went back in time to before they made it a law that people had to wear identifiers, destroying any and all official documents from that time forward. It meant that some people who had lost their property before that still stood without. On the other hand, we revoked our―the government's―claim on abandoned property. To this day it's legal to move into any house abandoned during the war and file an ownership claim. Only companies who want the property for monetary gain have to pay market value prices. Common people who just want a home for themselves can have them for free. Like in those villages around your town," Marlon says, looking at Dean when he says the last sentence.

He pauses to drain the last of his drink then goes on. “Jed couldn’t stomach it. He insisted to be there to witness it, but afterwards, he left the pack and changed his name to Jedikiah Hartley. He’s still alive, by the way, mated to grandma, wanting nothing to do with me. Grandma and I keep in touch every third year or so. They’re both retired now, and had two more kits after the war. Twins. It warms my heart knowing at least some of us got happy endings.”

“How did you execute the cover-up?” Dick asks.

Marlon stifles a yawn. “I’ll have to answer that another time. It’s getting late and I’m tired. Explaining all the things we did to make it work would take a week, at least. There were so many small parts we adjusted. Every newspaper for an instance keeps archives of their publications. We had every paper adjust those and reprint for the archives. We changed as little as we could get away with in every issue. Of course, some people reacted, but life is full of things happening and our attention span is short. The year that followed we changed so many laws and adjusted a lot of things that impacted daily life for the common people, that the things we wanted to cover up got lost in the hubbub of it all. Ever so often real newspapers or journals from those years surface and we paint them as fake. But, as I said, a story for another time. This old man needs to have his beauty sleep,” he says and winks at them before he gets up to leave.

* * *


	34. The Day After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Marlon went to bed, Luci and the others are trying to process all they've learned, having different concerns or lack thereof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW!  
> I made a complete rewrite of this chapter to get it to end on a jolly note since we're back in the present. Endings are hard. When I despaired my Beta reminded me that endings are hard to write because I haven't written as many ends as I have beginnings and middles, and that as I finish more and more stories I'll get more adept. That took a huge load of the pressure off me. I tend to think of 'writing' as one cohesive thing that you do, which it isn't. It has so many small parts and you can be better or worse at any of all these parts. :)  
> It felt good to write idiots being dorks again and I look forward to writing a couple of short, fun ideas I have before I resume the main plot again. ^^

* * *

Dean’s been mostly silent since Marlon left. He’s worried about something which worries Luci. But Dean’s anxious scent is faint and no one else seems to notice.

"I can't believe father did that," Mike says, crawling under the blanket and scooting closer to Dick.

"Can you come up with another solution?" Raphael asks.

Michael shakes his head.

Raphael looks at Luci who also shakes his head. "None that wouldn't have resulted in a much higher death toll. And if I'm honest with myself I would probably be in the group wanting revenge on all Conservatives," Luci admits.

"What surprises me is that you are surprised," Dick says with his pleasant smile. He's been purring to himself all while they'd gotten ready for bed and, surprisingly, smelt increasingly aroused, smirking to himself. "This is completely in character for the man I got to know when I started working for you. Your father is a devious, intelligent man. I found him frightening because he wasn't on my side. But now? _Grrr_ ," he ends with an appreciative growl. Luci thought all the revelations about Peter and the Hales would have been occupying Dick's mind, but no.

"I'm not surprised. Father has always torn the world apart for us if needed. I know he's obliterated the power of two prominent families because of their kits bullying me. It's never his first option. He likes to meddle as little as possible and to let a person be responsible for their own actions," Raff says and crosses his arms over Luci's chest to lean his chin on them and look at Mikey and Dick. They're all in bed together. Raff beside Luci who's on his back with an arm around Dick. Michael is spooning Dick and Dean's sitting cross-legged at their feet.

"Tornvalls and Kapoors?" Luci asks.

"Yes. In both cases, their parents wanted to do nothing to help correct the behaviour and instead thought I should move to a school for disabled kits."

Luci, Mikey and Dick all sneeze at the same time from the sudden spike of anger coming from Dean. Raff blinks in confusion and looks at Dean. He knows a coordinated sneeze means that someone close by might be mad. "I'm sorry, but that's fucked up," Dean says with a deep frown. "It's not like you needed extra help, slowing down the rest of the class."

"Raff was a straight-A student. The rest of the class slowed _him_ down," Luci brags proudly and tickles Raff between the shoulders.

"We were all A students,” Raff says dryly, diminishing his feat. He can’t hide the happiness in his scent, though. He likes the praise. Luci knows that. But if you brag about him too much he gets embarrassed and ill-tempered. “If we weren’t, Father, Aunt Amara or Uncle Aiden sat with us, patiently trying to find a way for us to absorb what we were meant to learn,” Raff explains to Dean and Dick.

“Dad did too, when he was alive,” Luci says. Sure, he remembers the fights Father and dad used to have. And when he thinks hard about it, he might remember dad giving Father the silent treatment too. But he most strongly remembers them as happy and in love. He hadn’t liked it one bit to hear how toxic their relationship probably was through and through. Let alone hear about Aunt Amara.

“Yes,” Mike says. “Nevermind that. I’m just glad Coombs is dead.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, no. Like hell, he is,” he says. “Your old man, the chronic insomniac, goes ‘Then we hanged most of the Aristocrats. Gee, gosh golly look at the time! Oh boy, am I tired. Gotta go, toodeloo!’ before we could ask for any details. And your dad, too young and inexperienced to step up to his role as a Main? Trailing Jeddy to learn? Then Jed fucks off and suddenly as if by magic your dad turns into this kickass politician? Fuck no, Finn isn’t dead. They kept him, and had him teach your dad how to lead a country.”

“Plausible,” Dick agrees.

Luci shares a look with his brothers, both wearing the same troubled frown as he is. “You really think so?”

“Hell yeah, I do. If there's something that was clear as day from Papa's story is that he doesn't know how to stop loving someone or how to leave a bad relationship. Finn and he had a great relationship. So at the Reckoning Finn's sitting there in the background shrunk in on himself trying to look like a non-threat. But your old man sees him and knows how smart he is. He gets him taken aside and stuffs him into your dungeon or some shit like that. And he tells Finn, 'You've lost. You get to choose. Get framed as a Union cronie and get hanged in Central Park, or help shape the world to our design.' Doubtlessly, Finn said yes to reshaping the world, taking his defeat gracefully because he still loved 'James', you get what I'm saying?" Dean does air quotes around James.

"Couldn't dad just have trailed Father or Aiden?" Mike says dubiously.

"None of them were politicians. They had to learn too. Papa was a fucking mess and at the same time, they reclaimed their company, trying to get that working properly again. Yeah, no."

"Aiden wouldn't have allowed it," Mike states. Lucifer isn't so sure. He thinks of what bullshit he'd put up with against his will for Mike. Or any of his brothers, for that matter. Aiden had repeatedly bent backwards to please Father if what their Father told them was true. So why not?

"Sure he would. If he got to oversee. And Finn's a pleasant fucker. He'd win Aiden over," Dean argues.

"If he knew," Raff remarks.

"I think he did," Dean states. "Have you ever executed anyone? Not just killed in the heat of battle? Cuz I have and I'll tell you that it fucks you up. Looking into the eyes of someone who is crying and pleading for their life is jarring down to the very soul. Imagine if that person was a five year old. Simply doing it to an adult is hard. Papa mighta told Aiden to be the good guy but simply being a witness woulda fucked him up. So if Papa pulled Aiden aside with Carter as his support and suggested that they force the dragon to rebuild the village it destroyed, Aiden would be ripe for the manipulation. I'd bet one of my kidneys that if Finn is dead, he died of old age in captivity. If he's alive it wouldn't surprise me if he's kept in one of the cells in the National Institute of Reproductive Health. Y'all have always said Papa likes to drop clues so that's where I'd put my money."

It does sound like something Father would do. It's making Luci very uncomfortable. The others too, judging by the smell. Except for Dick. Apparently, this too is hitting his kinks.

"Hey, guys, can you promise me something?" Dean asks after a moment of silence.

"Sure."

"Don't tell Sam. Like, you can tell him everything but skip over the details of Papa being behind the two lost battles and the reckoning. He's too idealistic. At least wait until he's finished college."

"We're not allowed to tell anyone unless they ask the right questions," Mike points out.

"Hah! Rhetoric is everything and Papa _explicitly_ did not tell us to keep our mouths shut," Dean points out. "No way he simply forgot. Just fucking promise me you won't tell him. I don't want him to be faced with doubts about having a Patriarch he might see as evil. Maybe that'd give him wanderlust."

"You think it would?" Luci asks worriedly. Mike also look worried while Raff isn’t fazed.

Dean shares a glance with Dick. Luci doesn't miss how Dick hides a smirk. "It might," Dean answers.

Dick doesn't think it will, judging by the smirk. Luci's not ready to risk it. "I promise," he hurries to say. Mike and Raff aren't far behind.

"Good."

Dean still smells anxious when he crawls under the blanket beside Raff. Luci finds it worrisome.

Luci wakes up and blinks in confusion at the green numbers on his alarm clock. 01:56 in the morning. He's unsure what woke him. There are soft snoring and content sleep-purring all around. But the scent of Dean's anxiety has gotten stronger. Then he feels it. Dean who at some point had ended up on top of him is slowly trying to crawl off him. "Where are you going?” he whispers. Normally he wouldn’t have asked but Dean’s anxiety unsettles him a little bit.

“To call dad,” Dean whispers back.

“Now? It’s 2 o’clock in the morning.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty fucking certain the yellow or green markers on the map were us Winchesters. Plus, I don’t think our town was as supportive of us as Papa painted it. I need to get some details cleared up for my own peace of mind.”

Luci swallows, dry-mouthed and nervous. “What are you going to do if it was? Will you at least grant Father a soft fade?”

Dean frowns with a spike of annoyance in his scent. “Dude. I’m not going to leave my mate because of something that happened way before I was born.”

“Then why have you been so anxious since Father went to bed?”

Dean’s frown disappears. “It ain’t what you think. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my pack, okay? Our pack motto was ‘Saving people, hunting things’, but if I’d been alive at that time I mighta classified Conservatives as ‘things’ if it really was as bad as Papa painted it. I can see myself turn into a fucking knight of hell in defense of my pack. But Marlon went behind the back of both Aiden and Chuck. And I ain’t buying that shit. I don't wanna be his cat's paw. He’s my mate and Patriarch so it’s gotta be us against the world. I’m fretting about it being an established pattern, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.”

But Luci does. Dean never comes back to bed after that. At five AM Luci gets up to use the bathroom. He can smell Dean’s markings on Father’s door frame and when he presses his ear to the door he hears soft purrs synced in sleep. He relaxes. Even more so when he wakes up and goes for breakfast. He hears giggling from the kitchen and smells recent sex. He stops in the doorway to look at his Father and Dean standing hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder by the counter. They've got their backs turned to him, leaned together, smelling happy. He can only see Marlon's expression but his father is smiling, eyes twinkling, looking decades younger. The claw injuries Dean gave him yesterday doesn't bother him at all.

Marlon straightens up, adopting a dignified mask as he turns to greet Luci. "Good morning, son." Luci's answer is drowned out when Marlon suddenly yelps and spins around to growl at Dean who sniggers.

"Mornin', Luci. There's coffee. And green tea. Because according to Papa some of y'all are freaks," Dean says scuttling out of reach of any retaliation.

"I decidedly did _not_ use those words," Marlon says dryly.

"Yeah… but we all know that's what you meant," Dean says with a smirk and brings a plate of fried eggs to the table.

Luci goes to fetch a cup of coffee then sits down, watching Dean and Marlon's playful interactions while he prepares his breakfast. Raff comes shuffling in soon thereafter.

When they're all seated and Dean and Father have stopped being dorks Luci looks at Dean. "What did your dad say?"

"You mean, aside from being one step from throwing himself into Baby to drive cross-country to save me? Like, chill, dad. I'm a grown-ass man with a pack of my own," Dean chuckles.

"You called him in the middle of the night, son. You don't usually do that," Marlon points out. "When you fooled nature you fooled nature, hence his emotional attachment to you is different than it normally would to an O offspring."

Dean rolls his eyes. "I know that. It was still funny. I told him that if he brought Baby I'd send him back in a Dodge Ram. I've got a garage now so if my girl comes here I ain't never letting her go," he grins.

The statement settles like a warm, fuzzy ball of contentment inside of Luci. In Raff and Father too, judging by their smell of contentment and Father's low all-is-well purr. It's not about the car but how comfortable Dean is thinking about their things as his too. Dean feels sure that if he said 'Hey, so, my old man needs a big-ass pickup truck,' they would buy one for him. In contrast, the other day Sam asked if he could take one of the books from the library to his room. It was a very old, expensive book by all means. But it's still a measurement of insecurity about the 'we' versus 'I' in their home whereas those words are interchangeable to Dean. It's a big feeling to Luci. He’s so lucky that he didn't screw up their chances with the coffee cup incident or the accidental mating bond to Sam. "But what did your dad say?" he prompts again.

"Oh, right, right. The yellow and green markers on the map were definitely us and the Campbells. Dad only gave me the cliffnotes, but his story was way different than Papa's. Like, Papa made it sound like our town were all lovey-dovey with us and that's why we opposed the reckoning. But that wasn't the whole truth. Like, they fought alongside of us to keep the Union at bay, but were increasingly hostile. So the Singers were in support of the reckoning, right? They bought the idea that it'd end the civil war so they could focus on the Union. We opposed it because we couldn't stomach killing non-fighting kits. But the Campbells opposed it because they're demons from hell apparently, and they wanted revenge on Conservatives in general, and the reckoning was presented as bringing peace. My grandpa, Samuel Campbell, wanted capital letter _Vengeance_ with all that entailed. So, yeah, that’s fun,” Dean says sarcastically. “Hah. Kinda ironic that my mushy hearted, heal-the-world lil’ bro was named after him,” he chuckles, mostly to himself. “Oh, oh! And us, the Winchesters and Singers, we were a lot more discreet in our protest of new, discriminatory laws. But the Campbells? When the law came that we had to wear the red P as an identifier, they fucking got it tattooed every last one of them. How cool is that? I don’t remember it myself, but dad told me mom had the P tattooed over her heart and anytime a Conservative official questioned why she wasn’t wearing an identifier she’d pull off her shirt, putting her tiddies on display like, ‘Oh yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it, _suckah_?’” He beams, shining with pride. “Like, I know that ain't the road to Unityville, if you get what I’m sayin’, but ain’t nobody stepping on my mama. And our packs weren’t playing on god-level, like Papa over here,” he pats Marlon’s thigh, “so we didn’t have to tiptoe about where we stood.”

“How did the reckoning impact your pack?” Raff asks over his tea. 

“Saved our asses, for sure. Not just due to the end of the civil war, but because of the reinforcement sent our way. Aside from a stint in the Canadian mountains we fought in our state and the states surrounding us. At the time the draft notice came, and, personally I think it’s fucked up that they sent them to packs with most members already engaged in the fighting, but okay. Anyway, when the draft notice came the Union had been driven out and kept at bay in Arkansas. So we adhered to the call and went to Canada like everyone else. But when we came back the Unionites that had been left behind had overtaken several of the surrounding villages and we found them at our very doorstep. We barely had any backup. And around the time of the reckoning we were trapped between the Union and aristocratic troops so without the backup sent our way we woulda been done for. But we didn’t manage to get rid of the Union completely until, like, one and a half year before I was born. Long after both wars were officially over. By then only mom, dad, and uncle Bobby were left. So, yeah, if Papa had let those yellow and green markers remain where they were on the map, I wouldn't have existed and our town might just as easily have been another ghost town."

"Has your dad ever met anyone of us?" Raff asks.

"Yup," Dean answers and takes a big bite of his sandwich. "He fought under Sean for a while," he says, chipmunking his food. "He didn't get that y'all were _the_ Williams pack until I mentioned y’alls grandma. It was mostly our Mains and sometimes our Patriarchs who were here for the council. And I didn’t mention that my mate nearly wiped us out of existence just because we told him no. Heh. I doubt that woulda gone over well. But, yeah, he had good things to say about Sean at least. Dad had been fighting since he was a kit and fought under him in Arkansas as a Juvie. He seemed kinda relieved I knew. Keeping big secrets suck.”

“It does,” Marlon agrees. “Which is why we created the loophole that if a pack member asked the right question we were allowed to answer honestly.”

Dean blows a raspberry. “Yeah, no. You added that clause to keep your bragging rights. Like, ‘Funny you should ask that, you see, I, me personally, saved Packrunning from ceasing to exist. I’m so powerful and intelligent and you should admire me’,” he teases.

Marlon snorts. “I resent that,” he says dryly and pointedly looks at the newspaper he’s holding in front of him.

“I ain’t hearing you callin me a liar,” Dean grins and pokes at Marlon’s shoulder.

Marlon’s lips twitch. He puts down the paper, grabs Dean’s chair and pulls it as close at it will go with a tug, then leans close to purr into Dean’s ear with a smirk, “I _am_ a very powerful, resourceful, intelligent and dangerous man, and you _should_ admire me.”

Beside Luci, Raphael laughs out loud. Luci sniggers and Dean giggles and gives Marlon an affectionate neck rub.

Nothing’s changed. It feels like it should, after these massive revelations, the fight yesterday and Dean’s night-anxiety. But if anything, Marlon and Dean’s relationship seems to have gotten even better.

Luci had been so swept up in Father’s story. He’d felt sad about Father and Arvid not getting mated, upset about the deaths, the two defeats, abhorred by the solution. But all of that was what led them here today. If Father had mated Arvid Luci and his brothers might not have existed. Packrunning might have been something mentioned in history books that people did in the past. But why hadn’t they tried to change the fabric of the society to popularise Packrunning again? Dad told them yesterday. Because if they did, the cover-up wouldn’t have worked. They were―are still―trying to give the hatred a soft fade to avoid bloodshed. 

“Yeah,” Dean says to Marlon. “Dick warned me about you. He said that if a world leader on the opposite side of the world got assassinated and you somehow benefitted from that within the upcoming five years, he’d wonder how you did it.”

Marlon smirks, looking smug. “He did? Oh my. And here I thought I handled the assassination of Kim Il-sung discretely,” he says in a joking tone.

“Kimmelsong, who?”

“For a short while Korea used to be a divided country and―” he cuts off with a dismissive gesture. “It’s not important. I handle city and state politics mostly these days. If needed, I meet with the other dominant packs to decide on domestic policies, but I’m no longer playing at, how did you express it? God level,” he says looking all too self-satisfied.

Luci sits smiling, watching the banter. Mike and Dick come to join them and when Dick chooses both coffee and green tea Dean scoffs and looks at him as if he’s personally wounded Dean somehow.

Luci wonders if Dean’s right about Coombs. After thinking it through, he doesn’t think so. Dean’s underestimating both Father and Uncle Aiden. It wouldn’t be that hard for Father to whisper in dad’s ear until dad knew how to do everything by himself. And Aiden was a force to be reckoned with. Dean couldn’t possibly know how capable Aiden truly was since he never met him. Father avoiding to talk about it could simply be because of how traumatized he himself was by the deeds done that fateful day.

Yesterday Luci had spent a few minutes wondering why Carter hadn’t been given one of the estates and companies of the murdered aristocrats. He’d come to the conclusion that he probably had. But they’d grown up with Carter― _Red Wright_ ―and he’s utterly content functioning as a domestic Alpha. He’s living in comfort mated to Naomi and he loves his work. Just because someone’s good at something doesn’t mean they’ll be happy doing it. Red’s happy being a gardener. Happy in a way he might not have been as an aristocratic oil magnate. 

“Did I tell y’all Sam used to have a deadly disease when he was little? It could only be cured by eating dirt three times a day,” Dean tells them.

Mike frowns. “Really?” he asks dubiously.

“Yup. Lucky I was around to tell him that,” Dean says with a shit-eating grin. It makes all of them laugh. “I managed to play him for two whole months. Dad was furious at me when he found out.”

“I wonder if it’ll work on Gabe?” Luci muses and pulls thoughtfully on his lip.

“Son, Gabe is a fully grown man,” Marlon points out.

“Yes, but he’s still little,” Luci argues holding out his hand at table height to indicate Gabe’s shortness, getting more laughter.

None of it matters. Maybe that’s the real victory that was won? If all this had been something you read in history books, then they would surely have been living in a totalitarian dystopia now. (Although, there are people claiming they do. Writing ranting articles about it in their distinctly _free press_. Good for them, Luci thinks sarcastically.) Father and the other freedom fighters had managed to successfully revert the worst effects of the civil war. They hadn’t tried to make the world perfect, just backed the bureaucratic time to a point where different designations didn’t feel entitled to kill each other. Pelting was still taboo. Maybe not so surprising as the generation who raised kits after the war were afraid, having lived in a time where it wasn’t only legal, but encouraged to kill someone who pelted. Packrunners were still scarce, but not so scarce they couldn’t find new mates or pack members. Luci remembers the first time he’d seen Dick. He’d responded to a stranger’s pack distress call at college and he wasn’t the only one to do so. None of the students that had heeded that call had gone there with fear of being outed as Packrunners. Some of the rhetoric, fear, and disdain for Packrunners still lived on, but in school they were taught about all designations and teachers tried their best not to let their bias influence their teachings too much.

Luci looks around at the people at the table with him, all talking and smiling. He loves every one of them. They’re happy. They still have worries and insecurities and problems, but generally speaking, they’re happy.

Any time Marlon tries to put on his dignified mask this morning Dean tells them one of his horrible puns or teases him until he turns giggly and playful like a newly presented Alpha with his first crush. Before the pack date, before Dean demanded he come Luci had suggested to Father that he should come along. Father had shook his head and said ‘I’ve had my fun. It’s your turn now.’ Getting to hear Father’s backstory… It’s a little more than three decades since dad died. Marlon’s waited three decades to exhale, putting his sons before himself. Before that? Anna. Peter. The very idea of having a kit again. Has he ever lived for his own happiness? Luci wonders if he even understands that to Luci and his brothers, his happiness is as important as theirs.

Does he see his father differently now? Perhaps. Does he love him less? Definitely _not._

When Dean leaves the kitchen to go get dressed Luci follows and pulls him to a stop in the corridor. Dean turns around and raises his eyebrows in question. “Yeah?”

“Did you and Father resolve the issue you fretted about yesterday?”

“We talked about it. He knows that shit doesn't fly with me.”

“And what if he ever does it anyway?”

“Then we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

“The expression is―”

“Did I fucking stutter? Believe me, if he does it bridges are gonna burn,” Dean interrupts with a frown. Before Luci can answer Dean rests his forearms on his shoulders and leans close with a serious look on his face. “Look, babe. It’s like this. Behind the layers of plotting and over-intelligence in Marlon’s brain, there lives an idiot.” Luci snorts in amusement getting a brief smirk. “He’s a tricky SOB, right? But I love him. I love all of y’all. I ain’t gonna pack up and leave at the first bump in the road. That’s not how I work. So I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen in the future. Marlon and I are gonna fight again. Then we’ll fuck like dogs, talk and cuddle, and fight again, talk, rinse and repeat until we land on the same page. You get what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Don’t worry about it. If you gonna worry, worry about what the hell Sam and Gabe are up to. Cuz at 5 AM I got a text from Sam that said ‘flamingos’ and nothing else, and neither he nor Gabe are answering their phones.”

Luci sniggers. “They’re fine. Gabe only masks as a disaster. He knows his way around and can take care of both himself and Sam. They’re probably still on the plane back home.”

“If you say so.” Dean leans in and rubs his neck affectionately against Luci. 

When Luci returns to the kitchen Marlon’s alone in there, loading the dishwasher whistling contentedly. “Father?”

Marlon turns around with a smile. “Yes, son?”

“I assume Coombs was hanged like the other Aristocrats?”

“That is a good assumption,” Marlon answers. His expression remains relaxed and there are no shifts in his scent.

“Dean thought you kept him alive,” Luci says and comes into the room to help clean up.

Marlon chuckles. “I know. He told me. He made a compelling case as to why I would have let Finn live too.”

Luci puts away one last plate and turns his head to look out the window overlooking the city. He crosses an arm over his chest and pulls thoughtfully on his lip with his other hand. Father hasn’t actually confirmed or denied whether Coombs was killed or not. “In school we were taught that Packrunning turned into taboo because big pack territories were targeted with bombs and napalm.”

“Brilliant, isn’t it? It isn’t even a lie. Areas with big packs meant well-organized unified defense so the USPR targeted them relentlessly. Conservatives _did_ have a higher survival rate in areas where the Union went for the packs. When we wrote the school books that would set the standard we lied as little as possible. But we did erase the importance of the government’s actions.”

“And other things.” Luci turns to face his father, leaning his back towards the counter. “We were always told dad was pregnant when you brought him back from Canada.”

Marlon goes to sit by the table, turning his chair sideways to be able to face Luci. “A complete lie, I’m afraid. We wanted to tell the story of the Union war, or wars if you prefer, but eradicate the civil war. So we split and bent the timeline. In history books you read about the reckoning in its modified form taking place at the same time as I was in Canada. Naturally, I’ve always wanted to tell you the truth."

Luci's eyes are drawn to the window again. He goes to look out through it. 

Marlon goes on after a short pause. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember the exact year or my age when things happened growing up. I have a good memory but everything blurs together as you grow older. I never thought I’d forget how old I was when I met Arvid. Looking back, it feels like that’s when my life started and still I don’t know if I was seven or ten.” Luci turns his head enough that he can look at Father, but Marlon isn’t looking at him. He’s drawing invisible doodles on the table with his finger, tracking the movement. “Aiden and I compared memories and they were different. We could remember what happened approximately at the same time, like the bombing of the harbour and me running away with Arvid. But when I think back I’m sure I was older. It feels to me like it wasn’t that long before I reached my Juvies but Aiden remembers it like I was still tiny. Arvid was no use asking. His answer was ‘gods are timeless, Ares’. Honestly, his concept of time’s passing was even more distorted than ours since he’d been travelling, constantly at war with no downtime to speak of.” 

Marlon pauses, lost in his own thoughts for a while. “My memories from growing up are so blotchy. I have long gaps of nothing. Not remembering Sean despite worshipping the ground he walked on is just the beginning. Aiden remembered my reaction to Sean coming home for briefings while undercover. Peeling me off Sean’s leg and my shock at Sean not loving me anymore. He did, of course, like he told me that day we had sex. But for me, he was a black hole in my kithood. He’s not the only one. Aiden’s told me about other pack members that I adored all the way up into my early Juvies that I don’t have a single memory of. My brain blotted out their existence the moment they died rather than dealing with the grief of losing them. But what I told you yesterday? That is as accurate as I could make it. Those are all memories I’m certain of that also coincide with the memories of others that were there.”

“You didn’t tell us that yesterday,” Luci phrases the question as a statement.

Marlon huffs and gives him a small smirk. “Son, I had no wish to put a spotlight on the fact that I’ve struggled with trauma-induced mental illness since I was a toddler. My mate and potential future mate deserve to know how close I am to falling into the deep end at any given moment but I want them to be seeing how well I keep it together, not how broken I am.”

“I’ve never seen you as being mentally ill or broken.”

Marlon smiles lopsidedly without humour. “Thank you.” He pauses then gets up to stand beside Luci looking out over the city. “To me, it’s always been easier to keep a grip on things when I look at it from an eagle’s point of view. When I consider doing something I step back and consider how it will affect my grandkits.”

Luci smiles. “You don’t have grandkits yet.”

“Exactly,” Marlon says and winks conspiratorially. “That’s why it helps me put my emotions aside and think of the consequences. I long for the day we get to hear a kitling’s gurgly sleep purr in our home. It’s nearly unfathomable to me that it might be reality within this decade.”

The two of them look at the city below. Even from here Luci can see a few beggars on the streets. “You think we could change all this?” he asks. “The country has a 50% unemployment rate―”

Marlon interrupts him. “ _Official_ unemployment rate. You think all this misery is a mistake?” He makes a sweeping gesture at the window. “That we couldn’t turn it around within five years? We could. It’s not even that hard. And our pack would stand to gain a lot of money if we did. The current numbers of 50% are based on people with a taxable income that are either small business owners or employed with a monetary salary. We’re not counting the self-sufficing farmers, hunters and foragers unless they sell their spoils. We’re not counting the craftsmen who trade their crafts for other goods or food. We’re not counting the tax evaders like the Hales. Official unemployment doesn’t accurately reflect how many people have jobs. We base our poverty calculation on money and a person or family’s ability to _buy_ things. The Kansas Winchesters are slightly above the poverty line despite legally speaking being the third biggest landowner in the area.”

It sounds like one of the non-answers Father gives to anyone questioning his politics, masking the truth behind numbers and statistics. Luci isn’t bothered about them not changing anything but he’d like to know why they don’t. He doesn’t quite see it. “They own their whole territory?”

Marlon shakes his head, still looking out. “No. But a great deal of it. They got their land way back when you could just claim a piece of wilderness and call it yours as long as you could defend it. Not until the Conservatives first came to power did we have to register our lands so we could buy and sell it legally. Hence there are many packs that own more lands than simple farmers or hunters would be able to afford today. During a period of time when I was young, the government taxed land ownership whether you profited of that land or not. Some packs lost their territory that way and turning back time gave the lands back. Although, we have complicated laws to allow for pack wars to settle territorial disputes. I can’t begin to tell you how many times Progs and Conservatives petition to change territorial pack laws.”

“Not surprising. I’ve come across their confusion many times in my work. It’s hard for many of them to wrap their heads around the legal land ownership overlapping pack territory,” Luci says then draws a deep breath. “I feel like I should be able to tell you why we don’t fix everything, especially since I deal with laws. But there are so many things going on in my head right now, so many feelings. I’m trying to come to terms with everything you told us. I’m asking myself if grandma and grandpa would want anything to do with me, if I even want to instigate contact? I’m thinking about dad, Uncle Aiden and Aunt Amara. How this all changes how I see them and puts a different spotlight on some of my kithood memories, how I see Naomi and Red. It’s. It’s a lot. My mind draws a blank. Could you give me a hint at least? I have a feeling it somehow relates to Napa Valley.”

Marlon lifts his hand to give Luci’s shoulder a squeeze. “You’re not supposed to see it because you’re not holding all the cards, son. When I was little Packrunners were at least 42% of the population. The government said 25% but when we went over their records we saw that it was a blatant lie uncovered in their records. After the civil war, less than 10% of us remained.”

Luci raises his eyebrows in surprise.

Marlon nods. “We had a lot less unaffiliated Primals and a lot more puritanical Conservatives than we do today. Today Conservatives are mostly lenient. Packrunning is back up to between 25 to 33%. Probably there are even more of us. Conservatives more often group into small packs, some even calling themselves packs now. Progressives are also rising in numbers. They’re an irksomely loud bunch, not fearing to make demands or advertise why they think their way of life is superior. That’s quite a contrast to how it used to be. Most importantly, our numbers are steadily rising. And it’s all because of this. This squalor and poverty.” He gestures sweepingly towards the window again. They can’t see much of the actual squalor from here, but they know it’s there.

Luci pulls thoughtfully at his lip.

Marlon goes on. “Packrunners are still hesitant to out themselves but no longer fearful of their lives or jobs if they do. City packs are hard to find. They don’t mark territory and they’re small. Often no bigger than three or four people. But they’re here. Aside from the dogged recruiting of converts of some packs like the Talons, the squalor and everything we do to make it harder for normal people to get monetary prosperity is what’s making us grow. Who survives impoverishment the best? Those who follow their instinct. Who most successfully rear their kits to adulthood? Those who band together. Who survives scentlessness the best? Those with several mating bonds, or the very least many strong friendship bonds. We’ve put up a glass ceiling over the vast majority of people to ensure as few people as possible can afford to do what rich Conservatives do and hire nannies and servants to mimic a pack."

“It encourages criminality,” Luci points out.

“It certainly does,” Marlon agrees with a content smile. “That’s why we haven’t gotten rid of the corruption within law enforcement. We make sure at least one pack has the upper hand in the bad parts of the city. Better yet, they’re not bound to withhold any bias. They treat other Packrunners better than other designations. You’ll find at least one pack like the Hales in every big city, upholding laws the police can’t, in return for dominion.”

"Is there a timeline to remove the glass ceiling?"

"Naturally. Little by little we are already. We're walking a tightrope trying to make as much money as possible while keeping the major part of the population poor to help spur on the growth of our designation. If all these people had money to spend we'd be making more money than gods. But we'd also see an upswing of competition and a rapid growth of the Conservative upper class that started it all. When we’re above 50% of the population it would be safe to remove the glass ceiling wholly and perhaps even install general elections without doctoring the outcome."

“So by allowing anybody to get rich we’d remove the advantage of being Packrunners, cutting them off very much like the diverted river did.”

Marlon smirks. "Exactly, son."

Luci hums thoughtfully. He decides to change the subject. “Dean was worried you’d shut him out like you did dad.”

Marlon looks down at his feet with pursed lips and puts his hands in his pockets. “It’s hard to tell someone everything when they’re emotionally unavailable a great deal of the time. Aiden and I often fought, physically or verbally, but we didn’t shut each other down the way your dad often did with me. I didn’t tell Aiden about being behind those losses that kept him up at night because I felt assured I couldn’t lose him over them, he’d just burden himself with the personal responsibility for them instead. Imagine if you were behind my play. Would you tell Gabe?”

“No.” Gabe always did care the most about the masses.

“Exactly. Dean wouldn’t tell Sam either unless it was necessary. I asked him. But Dean and I… My Charles would never have come to resolve an issue we were having like Dean did. Tonight Dean came to me telling me he had a problem with something I’d said and wanted to hash it out before it grew to unrealistic proportions in his head. I'll tell you what I told him. I don't _like_ keeping dire secrets from those I love. That doesn't mean I'll offer up everything that goes on in my head. I’ll try not to pester Dean about that walking piece of Alpha trouble, for instance. Not now that he’s professed to love him."

"Chaadayev?"

Marlon makes a grimace of disgust, annoyance in his scent. "Yes. He wasn't even on my radar before Michael proclaimed he loved him. Now Dean? I have a bad feeling about him but I can't just," he snaps a fingers, "make him disappear because Dean would surely investigate that with the doggedness of a badger. And Mikey had enough heartbreak when that Prog sweetheart of his disappeared. At least this time Mike has all the bonds he needs to make sure he doesn't leave us. So I remain passive but I don't like it one bit."

"Me neither," Luci agrees. He still thinks a knife in the back would be great solution but Dick’s threat of leaving holds him back from mentioning it. Maybe he has some needy-jealousy gene he shares with Father and that’s why he can’t just let it be?

Marlon suddenly chuckles. "If Aiden was alive he'd be teasing me about Chaadayev."

Luci nearly asks why but then smirks. "Tall, athletic, charismatic, handsome by Progressive standards and distinctly male?" He laughs when Marlon gives him a quick punch on the upper arm.

"Shush, kit. Aiden's gone, I don't need you to act as his mouthpiece.” Marlon gives him a stern look but his scent gives away that he’s amused, not angry. He puts his hand back in his pocket and turns to lean his back towards the windowsill, jostling one of Dean’s herbs, spreading its fragrance from the leaves he damaged. Their home smells mouth-watering these days from all the growing edibles. Last week he’d heard Dean roar in rage and come running. He’d smelled Gabe’s mirth when he came closer to the room and wrongfully assumed Gabe had pulled a prank. But when he got there he’d been met by Dean resolutely carrying a plant towards the bathroom while growling threats of murder at it, Gabe trailing after with a lovestruck, delighted expression. The reason? Aphids. Dean had proceeded to scold the plant while treating it in the bathroom and Sam who’d come to investigate had turned on his heel to stride off in search of other offenders that might have moved into their plants without their permission. Both Winchesters tended all plants without breaking stride. Passing a pot and turning it so all sides got sun or getting up mid conversation to nip a few dying leaves, making a quick round every day to make sure the plants had water. Sam goes primarily by his nose to discern the plant’s needs while Dean does it more by look and feel. Luci has even heard Dean talk to a plant. ‘What’s wrong, baby girl? Why aren’t you growing?’

“Is that it, though? Jealousy and attraction?” Luci asks. “My perception is that he’s aiming to take Mike and Dean from us.”

“Encouraging Dean to join up with us doesn’t speak for that. As for your first question, I can’t say. I never could. Not with Carter and not with Chaadayev,” Marlon answers.

“Speaking of, did we offer Carter, _Red_ , an estate or other reward for his loyalty?” Might as well clear that out.

“Naturally. He didn’t want it. They say that power corrupts which isn’t remotely true. Power reveals what we’d do if we could do anything we wanted. Just look at Malicia Hale. Us? Everything we do is to make sure our pack first and foremost, and Packrunners in general second, come up on top in case of another war. Carter came to the conclusion it wasn’t power in itself he wanted, but privilege. He could have been a major Conservative player and I’m glad he chose to serve us instead. Keith went into politics and he was constantly causing me headaches before he retired.”

“Did you and Keith remain lovers?”

Marlon smirks and lifts an eyebrow. “You’re asking me if I cheated on your dad?”

“No. Of course not. Of course you didn’t.” Even if he had, Luci doesn’t want to know. Simply hearing that Father and dad’s mateship might not have been the fairytale union he always thought, made him vastly uncomfortable. Sure he remembered their fights and dad stirring things up, but he tried not to remember it when there were so many nice memories to hold onto instead.

Marlon purses his lips for a beat. “Look, son, relationships can be hard work. Don’t expect everything to be perfect all the time. It won’t be. Your dad and I loved each other dearly. We had problems I’m not keen to talk about or even acknowledge. I never expected to find myself going kooky for a scent again, yet here we are. I’m mated to a young man who’s as infuriating and bratty as he’s wonderful. Who at any given point encourages us to _share_ the love. That’s new to me. Speaking of… How is Richard doing? I spoke of Peter but I wasn’t sure I should have.”

Luci chuckles. “I wouldn’t worry about it. When we went to bed yesterday his focus was on you and he was the very opposite of emotionally distressed.”

"Is that so…" Marlon purrs.

From the other room they can hear Mike ask Dick if he's seen Mike's top and Dick responding 'Yes, dear, Luci's in the kitchen.' Marlon and Luci share a look and a snigger at Mike's indignant huff.

Dick comes into the kitchen with that elegant walk of his. "Gabe requested we come get him and Sam at the airport," he says.

"Why don't they just get a cab?" Marlon asks with a little frown.

"I don't know, dear, but Gabe sent a picture of Sam with a black eye so Mike's about to throw himself in a car to go get them. He showed the picture to Dean to get support but didn't get the reaction he'd hoped for."

"What did Dean say?"

"'I'm glad he's alright.' So now Mike and Dean are bickering because Dean says that, I quote, ‘if the puppy is smiling he's alright’, and Mike says puppies are brave and always smile and that this particular puppy is injured and requires us to go to him immediately." Dick smirks. "Dean says that the puppy in question has long legs and can walk his damn ass home himself."

Marlon is highly amused. "How did he get the black eye?"

Dick shrugs and takes his phone out of the pocket. He hits a fast dial and waits. "Hello, dear. You've caused quite a stir here. Mike seems to be under the impression that you're dying." He chuckles when he listens to the answer. "Well… somehow I expected nothing less. May I enquire why you're not taking a cab? ...ah. I see. Technically, you could still take a cab and we could simply come down and pay it for you. But you just sit tight and we'll come get you. I had no plans for today anyway."

Luci patiently waits while Dick finishes the conversation with Sam. Calling Gabe is useless. He's a text only kind of guy unless he's the one who calls. The exception is if Raff calls. None of them would think to not answer him on purpose in case he's starting to feel depressed and needs to talk to stop him from spiralling downward. "What did he say?" 

Dick pockets his phone. "The black eye was acquired after imbibing alcohol and then going to ride a giant inflatable flamingo hitched to a race boat. They hit a wave in an unfortunate manner that set them airborne and Sam's own hand smacked him in the face upon landing."

Luci sniggers and Marlon's lips twitch in the corners. "And the cab?" Marlon prompts.

"Apparently, an alligator ate Gabe's wallet. Although, Sam wasn't so forthcoming with the how and why."

"Sweetheart, Gabriel doesn't care for hows and whys. For him it's 'like this' and 'why not?'" Marlon says with a tired tone.

Dick smiles and looks coyly at Marlon. "From what you told us yesterday I gather that he got that from his Alpha father,” he says and turns to leave, bending his neck to throw a seductive look over his shoulder. Luci turns his head to see his father follow Dick’s departing shape with a keen glint in his eyes and teethed canines digging into his lower lip.

* * *

Yesterday’s talk that somehow felt life-altering quickly fades into the background when they pile into their armoured 8 seater SUV, their security detail taking point and tail since they’re driving over the bridge to get to the airport. Marlon’s driving and it feels like one of those family trips from their youth, complete with a brief scuffle between Mike and Luci about who gets to ride shotgun. (Luci wins this time.)

Dean’s reaction to Sam’s shiner might have been underwhelming by Mike’s standards but Sam’s reaction to Dean’s bruised cheekbone makes up for it. He goes from upset and worried to bitch-faced and ‘Dean, what did you do?’ at first whiff of Marlon’s injured chest. Dean never answers that since he’s too busy teasing Sam for the flip flops and Hawaiian shirt he’s wearing. Gabe tells them how he lost his wallet to an alligator. It’s a lie since Sam stands behind him shaking his head mouthing ‘nope’ during the whole retelling. They never get to know the truth.

In the car on their way home Sam enthusiastically tells them how amazing it was to fly while Dean’s getting increasingly green, stinking up the car with fear. Raff suggests they all go skydiving because he’s as much of a little shit at heart like the rest of them. At that point Dean’s in a cold sweat and they have to roll down the windows to get the stink of Dean’s fear out. Gabe takes pity on Dean and decides to save him by verbally reviewing the stripclub he’d taken Sam to since he hadn’t had time to write and mail one to Mike―the only brother who has no interest in stripclubs―before they came home. Mike retaliates by singing show tunes on top of his lungs to drown Gabe out and then look utterly betrayed when Dick takes a small notebook out of his pocket, leans close to Gabe to hear what he’s saying, transcribing. Then Luci asks if they can stop so he can pee and you can see life leaving Marlon’s body when Gabe adds that he’s hungry. 

Marlon mutters “The most powerful people in the city never grew past the age of five,” with a discontent twist to his lips but smelling of every emotion associated with joy, contentment, and happiness.

Maybe it’s no wonder the coverup worked when Luci can’t even hang on to magnitude of what his father and his peers did half a century ago for the duration of a car ride…

* * *


End file.
